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Dessert

Wine Sauce for Puddings

A sauce made with sherry, water, egg yolks, sugar, lemon peel, and candied citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Wine Sauce for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of 5 eggs and beat them.

  2. In a clean saucepan, combine the egg yolks, sherry, water, sugar, lemon peel, and candied citron.

Cook the sauce

  1. Place the saucepan over medium heat and stir continuously until the sauce begins to thicken.

  2. Remove from heat immediately to prevent boiling, which will cause curdling.

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. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Their proteins set as they heat, thickening the sauce and giving it body.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the acidity of the sherry.
Sherry
Provides the wine flavour and aroma that define the sauce.
Lemon peel
Adds a bright citrus aroma that lifts the rich, wine-based sauce.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately. Egg yolks thicken gently, but when heated too far their proteins tighten and separate, so the sauce curdles. Pulling the pan off the heat as soon as it begins to thicken keeps it smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, egg, 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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