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Dessert

Fruited Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made with butter, brown sugar, cream, figs or dates, nut meats, and lemon extract, served with steamed pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fruited Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter and gradually beat in the brown sugar until soft and creamy.

  2. Add the cream drop by drop and mix well.

  3. Stir in the chopped figs or dates, nut meats, and lemon extract.

Serve

  1. Serve with a steamed pudding.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Butter + figtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,042 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 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
Creams with the sugar to give the sauce a soft, smooth, rich body.
Brown sugar
Creamed with the butter to add sweetness and a caramel-like flavor.
Cream
Added slowly to loosen the mixture and add richness and smoothness.
Chopped figs or dates
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the sauce.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a toasted, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the cream drop by drop. Adding cream slowly and mixing well helps it emulsify into the creamed butter and sugar. Adding it all at once can cause the mixture to split or look curdled.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, sugar, fig, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, sugar, fig, cream. 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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