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German Pudding Sauce

A wine and sugar custard sauce with lemon, used for German pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

German Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the white wine with the sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Once hot, pour the wine over the egg yolks and beat thoroughly over low heat.

  3. Continue beating until the mixture froths and resembles custard, ensuring it does not boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the lemon juice.

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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the wine as they set gently into a custard-like sauce.
White wine
Forms the liquid base and adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the acidity of the wine and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the sweetness and richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low while beating. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Gentle heat and constant beating let them thicken smoothly into a custard instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

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