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Dessert

Butterscotch Sauce

A sauce made from butter, cornstarch, salt, brown sugar, boiling water, and vanilla extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Butterscotch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cornstarch and blend thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the salt, brown sugar, and boiling water.

  4. Cook until there is no taste of raw starch.

  5. Remove from heat and add the vanilla 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. Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

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

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

Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body without making it gluey.
Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and molasses flavor that defines butterscotch.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the texture.

The step that matters

Cook until there is no taste of raw starch. Starch granules must be heated fully to swell and thicken the sauce. Stopping early leaves a raw, floury taste and a weaker texture.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

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