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Rum Sauce

A sweet milk-based sauce flavored with rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Rum Sauce

Why it works: Milk and rum work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 967 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Rum Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the milk and sugar together in a saucepan.

  2. In a small bowl, wet the arrowroot or cornstarch with a little cold milk.

  3. Add the wet mixture to the boiling milk and sugar, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before removing from heat, stir in the rum.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the sauce a creamy, smooth body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce its body as it dissolves in the hot milk.
Arrowroot or cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and gelatinizes when heated in the liquid.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavor; added at the end so the alcohol and aroma are not cooked off.

The step that matters

Adding the starch mixture to the boiling milk. Starch clumps if it hits hot liquid without being stirred in. Stirring constantly disperses the starch evenly, so it thickens into a smooth sauce rather than lumps.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, rum):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, rum. 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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