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Dessert

Milk PuppING Sauce

A sauce made from eggs, sugar, milk, arrow‑root or corn starch, nutmeg or mace, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Milk PuppING Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the butter into the sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and work all to a creamy froth.

  3. Wet the corn-starch with cold milk and add it along with the spice.

  4. Pour in the boiling milk by the spoonful, beating well all the time.

  5. Set the mixture within a saucepan of boiling water for five minutes, stirring constantly, but do not let the sauce boil.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs whisked into the sugar and butter add structure and body to the sauce.
Arrow-root or corn-starch
Starch thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, pourable body.
Butter
Fat creates a rich mouthfeel and carries flavour through the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, helps build a light froth.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce gently. Eggs thicken when heated but can scramble if they get too hot. Keeping the sauce in simmering water and stirring constantly lets the starch and eggs thicken evenly without curdling.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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