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Sauce

Cider Sauce

A sauce made from cider, brown sugar, cloves, bay leaf, salt, and pepper, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cider Sauce

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cider Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer all ingredients until reduced to the desired consistency.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine strainer or tammy cloth.

  3. Reheat the sauce and serve as a substitute for champagne sauce with braised ham or duck.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Cider + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cider + peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,234 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Cider + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Cider
Forms the liquid base that reduces into the sauce, giving it its main flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, and helps the sauce thicken and turn glossy as it reduces.

The step that matters

Simmer until reduced to the desired consistency. Cider is thin when it goes in, and the sauce only thickens as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while reducing too far can make it sticky and overly concentrated, so check the texture as it cooks.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, sugar, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, sugar, pepper. 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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