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Sauce

White Sauce for Pudding

A light, sweet white sauce made with egg whites, sugar, vinegar, wine, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

White Sauce for Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg whites and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Add the vinegar and beat well.

  3. Stir in the wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, fold in the sweet cream or milk.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the sauce its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps stabilize the egg white foam and sharpen flavor.
Wine
Adds aroma and flavor to the sauce.
Sweet cream or milk
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the cream or milk just before serving. Egg-white foam slowly deflates and overmixing knocks out air. Folling the cream in gently and at the last moment keeps the sauce light instead of loose and flat.

“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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