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Sweet Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, water, wine, lemon peel, suet, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Sweet Sauce

Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour until well combined.

  3. Add the water and stir carefully until it boils.

  4. For a variation, mix flour with water, add wine, lemon peel, suet, nutmeg, and sugar.

  5. Stir continuously, adding more water if the sauce is too thick.

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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated with liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the variation.

The step that matters

Stir continuously, adding more water if the sauce is too thick.. Flour thickens unevenly and can scorch or form lumps if left unstirred on heat. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed, and adding water loosens a sauce that has thickened too far.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, white wine, lemon, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, white wine, lemon, nutmeg, sugar. 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.

More sweet sauce recipes

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