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Dessert

Cold Pudding Sauce

A chilled sauce made from egg yolks, sugar, thick cream, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cold Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks until thoroughly mixed.

  2. Add the sugar and continue to beat until well combined.

  3. Stir in the thick cream and vanilla extract.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately without cooking.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and body, and their emulsifiers help the cream and sugar blend smoothly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten yolks become smooth and thick.
Thick cream
Provides richness, moisture and a silky, pourable texture.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma and a rounded flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Serve immediately without cooking. The yolks are never heated, so they are not pasteurised and carry a raw-egg safety risk. Using fresh, good-quality eggs and serving the sauce promptly, then keeping it cold, matters because it is not cooked to a safe temperature.

“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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