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Sauce

Cider Sauce

A sauce made from cider, sugar, butter, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Cider Sauce

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 ↓

Cider Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer the cider and sugar together for about 10 minutes.

  2. Add the butter and slightly thicken the mixture with arrowroot.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cider + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Cider + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cider + arrowroottop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider
Provides the main liquid and the apple flavour of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the cider.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, slightly glossy sauce.

The step that matters

Slightly thickening with arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens when heated and then loses thickness if overcooked or boiled too long, so add it gradually and stop once the sauce is just thick enough.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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