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Sauce

Molasses Sauce

A sweet sauce made from molasses, butter, ginger, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Molasses Sauce

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Molasses Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine molasses and butter.

  2. Boil the mixture together.

  3. Add ginger and cinnamon for flavor.

  4. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Butter + gingertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides the main body, dark color and deep sweetness of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the sauce.
Ginger
Contributes warm, spicy aroma that complements the molasses.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma that rounds out the spiced flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture. Boiling concentrates the molasses and thickens the sauce as water evaporates. Heating too long can make it overly thick or scorch on the bottom of the pan, so watch it closely.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, butter, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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