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Dessert

Common Sweet Sauce

A simple sweet sauce made with water, corn starch, sugar, vinegar, butter, and vanilla or lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Common Sweet Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, stir a paste made of 2 tablespoons corn starch or flour with a little cold water.

  2. Add 1 pint of water, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

  3. Cook over medium heat for three minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and add a piece of butter about the size of a small egg.

  5. Once cool, flavor with 1 tablespoon of vanilla or lemon extract.

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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Corn starch or flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch paste before heating. Starch clumps if it meets hot liquid without being fully dispersed in cold water first. A smooth paste lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

“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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