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Sauce

Vinegar Sauce

A simple sauce made with boiling water, sugar, flour, vinegar, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Vinegar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the flour with a little cold water.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling water and sugar.

  3. Add the vinegar and nutmeg, and boil for twenty minutes.

  4. Season with a little salt.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + nutmegtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,864 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp tang to the sauce.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling water. Flour dispersed in cold water before it meets the hot liquid stays smooth. Stir while adding it, because flour dropped in unmixed clumps and the starch on the outside gels before the inside can disperse, leaving lumps in the sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, vinegar. 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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