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Dessert

Sweet Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, butter, flour, nutmeg, and water, optionally flavored with wine or lemon, served with puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Sweet Sauce

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the flour and grated nutmeg, mixing until smooth.

  3. Gradually stir in the boiling water.

  4. Place the mixture over heat for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a serving dish and serve with boiled batter or apple puddings.

  2. If desired, add wine or lemon slices before heating.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sauce's richness.
Butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rich texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly over heat. Flour starch can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan if the mixture sits still while heating. Constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, wine. 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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