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Foaming Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made with powdered sugar, butter, sweet milk, wine, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Foaming Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cream together the powdered sugar and butter.

  2. Add the sweet milk and wine, then set aside until dinner time.

Warm and serve

  1. When ready to use, place the bowl in a pan of boiling water.

  2. Stir for 3 to 4 minutes until creamy.

  3. Pour out, add a little nutmeg, and serve immediately.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and body as it creams with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid for a smooth, pourable texture.
Wine
Adds flavour and aroma and thins the sauce slightly.

The step that matters

Warm gently and stir steadily. Keep the bowl over boiling water rather than cooking the mixture hard. Butter and milk can separate when overheated, while steady stirring gradually builds the light, creamy texture the sauce depends on.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

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