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Sauce

Gravies and Sauces

A thick brown sauce made from sugar, salt, and water, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Gravies and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a clean iron saucepan, combine the sugar and water.

  2. Set over low heat and stir with a wooden spoon until it turns bright brown and begins to smoke.

Thin and bottle

  1. Gradually add salt and dilute with water until it reaches the thickness of soy sauce.

  2. Let it boil, remove the scum, and strain into well-stopped bottles.

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

What each ingredient does

Pounded lump sugar
Caramelizes under gentle heat, producing the brown color and deep, toasted flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar over low heat. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to caramelize, and it can go from brown to burnt and bitter within seconds. Stirring constantly over low heat keeps the color even and the flavor clean.

“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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