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Dessert

Sweet Pudding Sauces

A sauce made by thickening boiling water, Swiss milk, and corn flour or arrowroot, flavored with optional ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sweet Pudding Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pour boiling water over Swiss milk in a saucepan.

  2. Blend corn flour or arrowroot with a little cold water or milk until smooth, then add to the saucepan.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  4. Add your choice of flavorings to suit the pudding being served.

Serve

  1. For a simple sauce, melt apricot jam and serve it over the pudding.

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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Rum + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Rum + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together728 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Swiss milk
Provides milk solids and sweetness, giving the sauce a rich, creamy body.
Corn flour or arrowroot
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce its body.

The step that matters

Blend the starch smoothly before adding it. Corn flour or arrowroot clumps if added dry or unblended to hot liquid. Mixing it first with a little cold liquid lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens into a smooth sauce when boiled.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, corn, rum, brandy, wine, vanilla, almond):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, rum, brandy, wine, vanilla, almond. 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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