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Sauce

Cider Sauce

A simple sauce made with flour, butter, brown sugar, boiling water, and boiled cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cider Sauce

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cider Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream together the flour and butter.

  2. Add the brown sugar and boiling water, stirring constantly.

  3. Stir in the boiled cider and simmer until combined.

  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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + cidertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep, molasses-like flavor.
Boiled cider
Adds concentrated apple flavor with a tart edge.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water while stirring constantly. Flour clumps if liquid is added too fast or unevenly. Constant stirring disperses the starch so it hydrates and thickens into a smooth sauce instead of lumps.

“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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