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Colouring of Soups or Gravies

A brown sugar syrup used to color soups or gravies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Colouring of Soups or Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the colorant

  1. Combine the sugar, water, and butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Heat over a gentle fire, stirring with a wooden spoon until it turns bright brown.

  3. Add 2 cups of water.

  4. Boil and skim.

  5. Let it cool.

Store and use

  1. Bottle and cork it tightly for later use.

  2. Add to soup or gravy as needed for color.

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.

  1. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Browns during heating to form the caramel that gives the colorant its color.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the caramel smooth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Heating the sugar until it turns bright brown. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to caramelize, and past the right color it turns bitter and burnt. Gentle heat and constant stirring let the color develop evenly without scorching.

“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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