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Dessert

Pudding Sauce

A buttery, sweet sauce flavored with wine and fresh strawberry juice, made by boiling butter, sugar, eggs, and wine, then adding strawberry juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Pudding Sauce

Why it works: Wine and strawberry work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 217 recipes. Both carry acetic acid hexyl ester, which smells sweet, green. The science ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar and beaten eggs, stirring well.

Thicken and finish

  1. Pour in the wine and bring the mixture to a boil for a few minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and mix in the fresh strawberry juice.

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. Wine + strawberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + strawberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the tartness of the wine and strawberries.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Wine
Contributes acidity and aroma, and helps thin the sauce before it is boiled.
Fresh strawberry juice
Provides the main strawberry flavour, colour and fruity tartness.

The step that matters

Boiling the egg mixture. Eggs thicken as their proteins set, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils too hard, the eggs can scramble and the sauce turns grainy. Keep the heat steady and stir while it cooks.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, wine. 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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