Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Pudding Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
In a large pot, bring 1 gallon of water to a boil.
Add 3 sliced lemons, 4 pounds of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of salt.
Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.
Thicken and finish
In a separate bowl, mix cornstarch or flour with cold water to create a thickening paste.
Slowly stir the thickening mixture into the sauce.
Allow the sauce to simmer for an additional 10 minutes.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon and sugar 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
- Sugar
- Provides sweetness and body to the sauce.
- Lemons
- Add acidity and bright citrus aroma to the sauce.
- Cornstarch or flour
- Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
The step that matters
Slowly stir the thickening mixture into the sauce. Adding the starch slowly while stirring keeps it dispersed. Dumped in at once, it clumps, and the sauce thickens unevenly.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Blueberryfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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