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Sauce

Ginger Sauce

A butter-based sauce flavored with ginger essence, preserved ginger, and ginger syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Ginger Sauce

Why it works: Sauce and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ginger Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Sweeten the butter sauce.

  2. Add a few drops of essence of ginger.

  3. For a richer sauce, rub preserved ginger and syrup through a wire sieve.

Combine and heat

  1. Mix with an equal quantity of butter sauce.

  2. Heat the mixture in a saucepan.

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. Sauce + syruptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + gingertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Butter sauce
Provides the rich, fatty base that carries the other flavours.
Essence of ginger
Adds concentrated ginger aroma and flavour.
Preserved ginger
Gives a richer ginger flavour and a slightly textured body when sieved in.
Syrup from preserved ginger
Adds sweetness and liquid, spreading ginger flavour through the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture in a saucepan.. Butter-based sauces can split or turn greasy if they get too hot. Gentle, even heat keeps the butter emulsified so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, syrup):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, syrup. 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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