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Maine Pudding Sauce

A sauce made from sugar, butter, flour, egg, and boiling water, used for pudding.

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

Maine Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg separately.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together with the egg yolk.

  3. Stir the flour into the dry sugar.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine all ingredients, mix well, and beat hard.

  2. Just before serving, pour in the boiling water and flavor.

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. 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Egg
Enriches the base and helps bind the butter and sugar into a smooth mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, when creamed, helps trap air in the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky, smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly.
Boiling water
Thins the mixture to a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Just before serving, pour in the boiling water. Adding the boiling water at the last moment keeps the sauce hot and pourable. Adding it too early can thin the mixture before it is ready to serve.

“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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