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Wine Sauce for Plum Pudding

A wine sauce made with egg yolks, sugar, butter, and sherry, served over plum pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Wine Sauce for Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Add the sugar and melted butter, and stir until very light.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready to serve the pudding, bring the sherry wine to a boil.

  2. Pour the hot wine over the egg and sugar mixture. Stir well and serve.

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

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

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Egg + buttertop 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. 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 yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with the warm wine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the yolks beat to a light, airy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the sauce a rich, velvety mouthfeel.
Sherry wine
Provides acidity and aroma, flavouring the sauce with its distinctive character.

The step that matters

Pour the hot wine over the egg and sugar mixture. Pouring the wine in gradually while stirring keeps the yolks from scrambling. Adding it too fast or with too little stirring can cook the eggs in lumps instead of producing a smooth sauce.

“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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