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Silver Sauce

A clear, sweet sauce thickened with cornstarch, flavored with optional cinnamon or lemon peel, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,147 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Silver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Bring the water to a boil.

  2. Blend the cornstarch with a little cold water, then stir it into the boiling water.

  3. Add the sugar and stir constantly for about 3 minutes until the mixture is transparent.

  4. If using, add the cinnamon stick or lemon peel to the sauce while it boils.

  5. Remove the saucepan from heat, then add the butter and flavoring to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain out the cinnamon stick or lemon peel and serve hot.

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. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 water into a clear sauce when heated with stirring.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, mellowing the sauce's flavor and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch into the boiling water. Cornstarch clumps if added without first being blended with cold water, and it only thickens fully when the mixture is brought to a boil and stirred, so lumps and a thin sauce are the likely errors.

“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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