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Pudding Sauce

A warm wine and egg yolk sauce flavored with lemon, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pudding Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the wine, egg yolks, and egg whites.

  2. Add the lemon juice, ground cinnamon, and sugar.

  3. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, until warm but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. 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.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Egg whites
Add body and lightness to the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Wine
Provides the liquid base and a fruity flavour for the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the richness of the eggs.

The step that matters

Heating over low heat without boiling. Egg proteins set gently at moderate heat. Boiling can curdle the eggs and leave the sauce grainy, so stir constantly and keep the heat low.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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