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Dessert

Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sugar, butter, egg yolks, cornstarch, and water, finished with wine or brandy.

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

Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light.

  2. Add the egg yolks and cornstarch, mixing well.

  3. Gradually stir in boiling water until the sauce reaches a thick cream consistency.

  4. Add wine or brandy to taste.

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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps give the sauce a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter sauce.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsifying power, helping the sauce hold together smoothly.
Cornstarch or arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as it is heated with the liquid, giving body to the cream consistency.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in boiling water. Adding the boiling water slowly while stirring keeps the egg yolks and starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy or curdled.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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