Why it works: Syrup and arrowroot work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 37 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Fruit Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Heat the syrup from canned fruit, such as peach or pineapple.
Mix cornstarch with cold water.
Gradually add the mixture to the fruit juice.
Cook until there is no taste of raw starch.
Remove from heat.
Add the finely cut fruit.
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.
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Syrup + arrowroottop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together37 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cornstarch or arrowroot
- Thickens the syrup into a glossy sauce as its starch swells when heated.
- Fruit syrup
- Provides the sweet liquid base that the starch thickens.
- Fruit
- Adds fruit pieces and flavour to the finished sauce.
The step that matters
Cook until there is no taste of raw starch. Starch must be heated fully so its granules swell and thicken the liquid. Undercooked starch leaves a raw, pasty taste, so the sauce should be cooked until that taste is gone.
“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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