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Dessert

Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, flour, water, butter, vanilla, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, beat the sugar and egg yolk with a little water.

  2. Add the flour and then the boiling water and butter.

  3. Let the mixture boil for a few moments.

Finish the sauce

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the well-beaten egg white and stir gently.

  2. Add the vanilla 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and adds body to its texture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce as it heats.
Egg white
Adds lightness and a softer, airier texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and a warm, rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot mixture over the egg white. Pour slowly while stirring gently. The hot liquid partly cooks the egg white, so a fast pour or vigorous stirring can leave cooked lumps and an uneven, grainy texture instead of a smooth sauce.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, egg. 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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