Name: Fruit Sauce
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons raspberry jam or ½ pint of fruit; 2 tablespoons sugar; ½ pint water

Why it works: Raspberry and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,101 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fruit Sauce

Ingredients

2 tablespoons raspberry jam or ½ pint of fruit
2 tablespoons sugar
½ pint water

Directions

Combine raspberry jam or fruit, sugar, and water in a saucepan.
Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.
Strain through a fine sieve.

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.

Raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,101 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raspberry jam or fruit: Provides the main fruit flavour and colour, and sets the sauce's body as it reduces.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit.

“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.