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Sauce

Pudding Sauce

A sauce made from butter, sugar, egg, and wine or brandy, melted over a boiling kettle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Prepare

  1. Mix the butter and sugar well.

  2. Add the beaten egg and mix thoroughly.

Heat and serve

  1. Place the bowl on top of a boiling tea kettle to melt, without stirring, until just melted.

  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. 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps give the sauce a smooth texture.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and thickens it gently when heated.
Wine or brandy
Adds liquid, flavour and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Melting over the kettle. The bowl should sit over steam rather than touch the water, and be heated only until the butter melts. Egg proteins set and curdle with too much heat, leaving the sauce grainy, so stop as soon as the butter is melted.

“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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