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Vinegar Sauce

A sweet and tangy sauce made with sugar, butter, boiling water, vanilla, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Vinegar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the sugar and butter together until light and creamy.

  2. Just before serving, add the boiling water, vanilla, and vinegar.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps give the sauce a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a smooth, light texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweetness and balances the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water just before serving. Boiling water melts the creamed sugar and butter into a smooth, pourable sauce. Adding it too early lets the mixture cool and stiffen, and the sauce loses its loose, glossy texture.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Peachfits about as well

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