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Dessert

Sauce for Bread Pudding

A buttery, sweet sauce thickened with flour and egg yolk, flavored with brandy or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sauce for Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the sugar until combined.

  2. Add the egg yolk and flour, then stir in the boiling water.

  3. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Finish

  1. Gently fold in the well-beaten egg white without whipping.

  2. Flavor with brandy or sherry before serving.

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. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and adds body to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce as it heats.
Flour
Its starch swells when heated with liquid, thickening the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens. Flour starch swells and thickens only as the mixture heats, and constant stirring keeps it smooth. Stopping early leaves it thin, while stopping late or letting it sit on the heat can cause lumps or scorching.

“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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