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Dessert

Favorite Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, water, cream, salt, vanilla, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Favorite Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water and heat gradually.

  2. When hot, stir in the corn starch mixed smooth with a little cold water.

  3. Add the salt and stir until clear.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Add the cream

  1. Whip the cream.

  2. Stir the whipped cream into the sauce.

  3. Whip together for 2-3 minutes.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Vanilla + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Dissolves in water to form the sweet base of the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it heats and the starch swells in the liquid.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body, and whipping it lightens the finished sauce.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and a rounded flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the corn starch in smoothly. Starch mixed with cold water first disperses evenly. Added to hot liquid without this, it clumps, and the sauce stays lumpy instead of thickening smoothly.

“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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