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Sweet Sauce for Puddings

A sweet sauce made from butter, milk, sugar, and flavorings, served with puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Sauce for Puddings

5 persons and 7 persons both listed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the butter

  1. Make 1/2 pint of melted butter by recipe No. 380, omitting the salt.

  2. Stir in 4 heaped teaspoonfuls of pounded sugar.

  3. Add a little grated lemon rind, nutmeg, or powdered cinnamon.

  4. Serve the sauce.

Make the custard

  1. Infuse about half a dozen bitter almonds in milk for about 1/2 hour, strain, then add to the other ingredients.

  2. Beat the eggs.

  3. Sweeten the milk.

  4. Stir the eggs and milk together.

  5. Flavor the mixture with essence of vanilla, adjusting the proportion to the strength of the essence and the size of the eggs.

  6. Put the mixture into a small jug.

  7. Place the jug in a saucepan of boiling water.

Thicken and serve

  1. Stir the sauce one way until it thickens, but do not allow it to boil.

  2. Serve the sauce in a boat or tureen separately, with plum, bread, or any kind of dry pudding.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

408Calories
15 gProtein
26 gFat
29 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Vanilla1 tsp extract (4ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

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

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Eggs
Set as they warm gently, thickening the sauce into a custard.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening over hot water without boiling. Egg proteins set gradually as they warm. If the sauce boils, they tighten and curdle, leaving it grainy and thin. Stir steadily in one direction and stop heating before it boils.

“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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