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Pudding Sauce

A simple butter, sugar, and corn starch sauce thickened with boiling water and flavored with vanilla or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Pudding Sauce

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 ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the corn starch and mix well.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and stir until smooth.

  4. Add your choice of flavoring and mix well.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps build a light base.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body and a glossy texture.
Boiling water
Dissolves the sugar and hydrates the starch so it can thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Pouring in the boiling water. Starch only thickens properly once it is hot enough to swell and gelatinize. Stir while pouring so the cornstarch disperses without lumps, and keep stirring until the sauce is smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, corn, vanilla. 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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