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Colouring for Soups and Gravies

A caramel coloring made from sugar, water, and butter, used to tint soups and gravies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Colouring for Soups and Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine the sugar, ½ cup of water, and butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Heat over a gentle fire, stirring with a wooden spoon until it turns bright brown.

Dilute and finish

  1. Add 2 cups of water, bring to a boil, and skim off any impurities.

  2. Once cooled, bottle and cork the mixture tightly.

  3. Add to soup or gravy until the desired color is achieved.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Browns as it heats, forming the deep color of the caramel.

The step that matters

Heating until bright brown. Sugar browns quickly once it caramelizes. Heating gently and stirring keeps it from scorching, since burnt sugar turns bitter and dark too fast to control.

“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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