Name: Sweet Sauce for Puddings
Ingredients: ½ cup butter sauce; 2 tablespoons vinegar; 1 tablespoon sugar; or 4 tablespoons raspberry vinegar; or 2 tablespoons treacle; 1 tablespoon vinegar; grated nutmeg (optional); other condiments (optional)

Why it works: Sauce and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Combine the butter sauce, vinegar, and sugar in a bowl.
Alternatively, use raspberry vinegar or a mix of treacle and vinegar.
Add grated nutmeg or other condiments if desired.
Serve over puddings.

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.

Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Vinegar + raspberrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together303 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Raspberry + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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: Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the sweetness of the sauce.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the vinegar.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, vinegar, sugar, raspberry):

Cinnamonfits better
Tarragonfits better
Peppermintfits about as well
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, vinegar, sugar, raspberry. 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.