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Sauce

Plain Hot Pudding Sauce

A simple sauce made from boiling water, sugar, flour, butter, salt, and optional flavorings such as vanilla, sherry, or nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Norton, Caroline Trask · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Plain Hot Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the flour, sugar, and salt well together.

  2. Slowly pour the mixture over the boiling water, letting it boil for ten minutes.

  3. Add the creamed butter and flavoring.

Flavor

  1. Optionally, add flavorings such as nutmeg, vanilla, lemon rind, sherry, madeira, or brandy. A little nutmeg added with any of these flavorings improves the sauce.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

643Calories
13 gProtein
13 gFat
109 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Wine2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)25
Vanilla1 tsp extract (4ml)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Norton, Caroline Trask. 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. See the original page.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 sauce as it boils, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and adds to its body once dissolved.

The step that matters

Pouring the dry mixture over the boiling water. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid all at once. Pouring slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Apricotfits less well

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