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Cherry Pudding Sauce

A sweet cherry sauce made with cherry juice, sugar, water, butter, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cherry Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the water in a double boiler.

  2. Add butter and sugar to the hot water, then stir in the cherry juice.

  3. When the mixture is scalding hot, mix in the cornstarch to thicken.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, thin it with more cherry juice.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with whole or half cherries in the sauce.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cherry + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Cherry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cherry juice
Provides the main liquid and fruity flavour of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture is hot enough for its starch granules to swell and gelatinize. Adding it too early or too cold can leave the sauce thin or lumpy, so it should go in once the mixture is scalding hot.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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