Name: Blackberry Hard Sauce
Ingredients: 4 cups butter; 1 cup white sugar; 4 cups crushed blackberries; whole blackberries for garnish

Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Blackberry Hard Sauce

Ingredients

4 cups butter
1 cup white sugar
4 cups crushed blackberries
whole blackberries for garnish

Directions

Make the sauce

Cream the butter until smooth.
Gradually beat in the white sugar.
Mix in the crushed blackberries until well combined.

Serve

Transfer to a glass dish and garnish with whole blackberries.
Chill in the refrigerator until cool.

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.

Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Creates a rich, smooth base that carries the sugar and fruit.
White sugar: Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the blended butter.
Crushed blackberries: Provides fruit flavor, color and moisture to the sauce.

“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.