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Sauce

Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, butter, eggs, and flavoring, steamed until set.

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

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, beat together the sugar, butter, and egg yolks until light and fluffy.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Add flavoring to taste.

Steam and set

  1. Steam the mixture over boiling water until set.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Adds sweetness and helps the butter and yolks beat into a light, fluffy base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and, when heated, thicken and set the mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lightness and airiness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Steam until just set. Egg proteins set with gentle heat. Too much heat or too long over boiling water can curdle or toughen the eggs, leaving a grainy texture, while too little leaves the sauce runny.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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