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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, lemon, wine, cinnamon, sugar, and butter, heated over a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Whip the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Rub the butter into the sugar.

  3. Add the yolks, lemon juice and peel, cinnamon, and mix well.

  4. Beat the mixture for five minutes.

  5. Stir in the wine vigorously.

  6. Set the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water and stir until scalding hot, but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the pudding.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  5. Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, helps give it a light texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma, balancing the sweetness of the sugar.
Wine
Adds liquid and acidity, contributing flavour depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but if the mixture boils they can scramble and curdle. Stir over gentle heat only until scalding hot, and do not let it boil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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