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Dessert

German Cherry Sauce

A sauce made from cherries, wine, sugar, lemon zest, spices, thickened with potato flour, served over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

German Cherry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Beat the cherries in a mortar until the stones are broken.

  2. Boil the cherries with the water and wine until tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve and return it to the pot.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon, and cloves, and boil again.

  2. Mix the potato flour with a little cold water until smooth.

  3. Stir the potato flour mixture into the sauce and continue stirring until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce poured over pudding or in a tureen.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and body of the sauce once cooked and sieved.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the cherries.
Potato flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the cooked cherries.

The step that matters

Stirring in the potato flour mixture. Potato flour must be mixed smooth in cold water first, then stirred into hot liquid and kept moving. Otherwise it clumps and does not thicken evenly.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, clove, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, clove, flour. 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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