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Sauce

Plain Pudding Sauce

A simple sauce made from water, flour, butter, brown sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

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

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine hot water and flour.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until thickened.

  3. Add melted butter and brown sugar, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.

  4. Stir in lemon juice and nutmeg to taste.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the water into a smooth sauce as it cooks and gelatinizes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the brown sugar.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and water until thickened. Flour needs heat and steady stirring to swell and gelatinize. If it is undercooked or lumpy, the sauce stays thin or tastes raw, and stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, nutmeg. 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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