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Clear Sauce

A simple clear sauce made with water, sugar, corn starch, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Clear Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starch base

  1. Dissolve corn starch in a small amount of cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Pour in the pint of boiling water and stir well.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add butter and sugar, then cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Add any flavor you like.

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. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the water into a clear, smooth sauce as it heats and gelatinizes.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and a smooth, rounded finish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sauce.

The step that matters

Dissolving the corn starch in cold water first. Starch dropped straight into hot liquid clumps because its outer layer swells instantly and traps dry starch inside. Dispersing it in cold water first lets the granules separate evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly when it boils.

“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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