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Creamy Sauce for Puddings

A sweet, thick sauce made with butter, brown sugar, sweet cream, and lemon or wine, used for puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamy Sauce for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter with a small wooden spoon.

  2. Gradually add the brown sugar and sweet cream, beating until very light.

  3. Stir in the juice and grated rind of the lemon or wine to taste.

  4. Place the bowl over a kettle of boiling water, stirring until the mixture becomes a thick, creamy froth.

  5. Set aside but keep it hot until needed.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel flavour, and helps the mixture become light when beaten.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the mixture into a smooth sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Stirring over boiling water. Heat must be gentle enough to thicken the mixture into a froth without curdling or scrambling the cream and butter. Keeping the bowl above the water rather than in it, and stirring constantly, helps the sauce thicken evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream. 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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