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Sauce

Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made with egg yolks, sugar, flour, milk, butter, and egg whites.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Mix in the sugar and flour.

  3. Melt the butter in the boiling milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Flavor as desired.

Finish and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Enrich the sauce and thicken it as they set with gentle heat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Flour
Its starch thickens the hot liquid into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour and yolks thicken.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Egg whites
Trapped air from beating lightens the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites.. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the beaten whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving the sauce dense instead of light.

“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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