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Dessert

Sweet Sauce

A sweet sauce made with butter, sugar, flour, water, raisins, almonds, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Sweet Sauce

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the butter and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Mix in the flour and add the water.

  3. Let it boil, then add the raisins and chopped almonds.

  4. Stir in the cream and boil for 30 minutes.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and its milk solids brown to give a nutty taste.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and caramelizes when browned, adding color and depth.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Sweet almonds
Add crunch and a mild nutty flavor.
Cream
Adds body, smoothness and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and sugar. Butter and sugar can go from golden to burnt within seconds over heat. Sugar that scorches turns bitter, which the rest of the sauce cannot hide, so the pan needs close watching at medium heat.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, almond, cream):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, almond, cream. 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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