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Sauce

Cranberry Pudding Sauce

A simple sauce made from cranberry juice, syrup, water, flour, and lemon juice, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flour slurry

  1. Mix flour with cold water until smooth.

Cook and finish the sauce

  1. Add the flour mixture to the cranberry juice and syrup.

  2. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and serve hot.

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. Cranberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

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

  2. Flour + cranberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together268 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, lightly set sauce when heated.
Cranberry juice
Main liquid that supplies the sauce's tart cranberry flavour and body.
Syrup
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the cranberry juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, stirring constantly for 5 minutes. Flour starch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil. Constant stirring keeps the flour dispersed so it does not clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the cranberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, syrup, lemon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, syrup, lemon. 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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