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Dessert

Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, butter, egg yolks, cornstarch, water, wine or brandy, and molasses.

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 molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add the egg yolks and cornstarch or arrowroot, mixing well.

  3. Gradually stir in boiling water until the mixture reaches a thick cream consistency.

  4. Add wine or brandy to taste.

Apple pudding variation

  1. For the apple pudding sauce, boil good molasses with a little butter and serve hot.

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 + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 cream to a light texture.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and adds richness.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help bind it with their emulsifying fat and protein.
Cornstarch or arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as it heats with boiling water.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in boiling water. Adding the water slowly lets the starch thicken evenly without lumps. Dumping it in at once can leave clumps of starch and a sauce that is uneven in texture.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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