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Dessert

A Good Plain Sauce

A sauce made from brown sugar, molasses, butter, flour, lemon, spices, and water, simmered until clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Good Plain Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix brown sugar, molasses, butter, flour, lemon juice and rind, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon in a bowl.

  2. Stir in boiling water gradually while mixing constantly.

  3. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and bring to a boil until clear.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce before serving.

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.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep caramel flavour to the sauce.
Molasses
Provides the main dark colour, rich flavour and body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water gradually. Flour clumps if liquid is added too fast or unevenly. Stirring constantly while adding the water disperses the flour so the sauce stays smooth and thickens evenly when it boils.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, butter, flour, nutmeg, clove, 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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