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Dessert

German Cherry Sauce

A sweet cherry sauce made with cherries, wine, sugar, spices, and thickened with potato flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

German Cherry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the stones from the cherries using a mortar.

  2. Boil the cherries with the water and wine until tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the strained mixture again with sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Mix the potato flour with a little cold water until smooth, then stir it into the sauce.

  3. Continue stirring until the sauce is ready to boil again.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce poured over pudding or in a tureen.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and, once cooked and sieved, the body of the sauce.
Potato flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the cherries.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma while helping to soften the cherries as they cook.

The step that matters

Stirring in the potato flour. Potato flour must be fully dispersed in cold water before it goes into hot liquid, otherwise it forms lumps. Stirring continuously as the sauce returns to the boil lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, clove, flour. 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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