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Dessert

Nut Fudge Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sugar, milk, butter, chocolate, vanilla, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Nut Fudge Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the chocolate and add it to the white and brown sugars.

  2. Slowly pour in the milk while stirring.

  3. Add the butter and cook until the mixture granulates around the edge of the saucepan.

  4. Remove from heat, then stir in the vanilla and chopped nuts.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with vanilla or chocolate ice cream.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

White sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce as it dissolves and thickens.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the sauce.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the sugars dissolve into and cook down to form the sauce.
Chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and helps give the sauce its richness.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rich mouthfeel in the finished sauce.
Nut meats
Add crunchy texture and a toasted, nutty flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture granulates at the edge. Sugar and milk must cook down far enough to thicken, but not so far that the sugar crystallises. Overcooking makes the sauce grainy or hard as it cools, while undercooking leaves it thin and runny.

“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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