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Syrup Sauce

A simple pineapple syrup sauce thickened with corn flour, served over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Syrup Sauce

Why it works: Pineapple and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 911 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Syrup Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the pineapple syrup and water in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the sugar and a little vanilla essence.

  3. Add the corn flour and stir until it boils.

  4. Serve the sauce around pudding.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Syrup + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Corn flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats and boils.
Pineapple syrup
Provides the main pineapple flavour and sweetness to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the tartness of the pineapple.

The step that matters

Add the corn flour and stir until it boils. Corn flour must be fully heated past boiling to swell and thicken. Adding it to liquid without constant stirring can cause lumps, and stopping before it boils leaves the sauce thin and starchy-tasting.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, sugar, vanilla, corn, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, sugar, vanilla, corn, 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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