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Sauce

Sweet Sauce for Fuddings

A sweet sauce made with butter, vinegar, sugar, and optional raspberry vinegar, treacle, or nutmeg for fuddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce for Fuddings

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of vinegar and a little sugar to ½ pint of butter sauce.

  2. Alternatively, use 4 tablespoons of raspberry vinegar or 2 tablespoons of treacle with 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

  3. Optionally, add grated nutmeg or other condiments to taste.

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. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Vinegar + raspberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Raspberry + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together165 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Butter sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, providing richness and a smooth, pourable body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Treacle
Adds deep sweetness and a darker, molasses-like flavour.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, vinegar, sugar, raspberry):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, vinegar, sugar, raspberry. 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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