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Sauce

Cider Sauce

A simple sauce made with butter, sugar, flour, and cider, simmered for two minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Cider Sauce

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cider Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the butter and flour together in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pour the boiling hot cider into the mixture.

  4. Stir while it boils for two minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + cidertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the cider.
Cider
Forms the liquid base and supplies the apple flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring while the cider boils. Flour thickens only when the liquid is hot enough and stirred, so the starch disperses evenly without lumps. Stopping the stirring or pouring the cider in too fast can leave clumps that stay in the finished sauce.

“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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