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Dessert

Raspberry Sauce

A fruit sauce made with lemon peel, raspberry juice, sugar, cinnamon, water, and thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Raspberry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the lemon peel, sugar, cinnamon, and water together for 5 minutes.

  2. Mix the corn starch with 2 tablespoons of water, then add it to the boiling mixture.

  3. Boil for 1 minute, then remove the lemon peel.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the raspberry juice and serve hot or cold, as preferred.

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

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

  2. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cinnamon + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Raspberry + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as its starch granules swell and gelatinize when boiled.
Raspberry juice
Supplies the main raspberry flavour and colour of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Lemon peel
Infuses citrus aroma into the liquid before it is removed.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 minute after adding the corn starch. Starch must reach a full boil to thicken properly and to cook out its raw, floury taste. Stirring keeps it from clumping or scorching while it thickens.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, cinnamon, corn):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, cinnamon, corn. 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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