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Dessert

Fruit Pudding Sauce

A buttery, sugared sauce thickened with corn starch, lemon, and water for fruit pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Fruit Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together well.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a little cold milk.

  3. Pour the mixture into the boiling water.

  4. Stir over medium heat until well thickened.

  5. Combine all ingredients in a bowl.

  6. Beat for five minutes.

  7. Return to the saucepan.

  8. Heat almost to boiling before serving.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when creamed with butter, helps create a light, smooth base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Stir over medium heat until well thickened. Corn starch only thickens once its granules are dispersed and heated enough to swell and gelatinize. Stop too early and the sauce stays thin; keep stirring so it does not scorch or form lumps on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, corn, milk. 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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