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Sauce

Pudding Sauce

A buttery, sweet sauce made with butter, sugar, wine, and water, served immediately.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy and well combined.

  2. Boil the wine and water together in a small pot.

  3. Quickly stir the boiled mixture into the butter and sugar until frothy.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately, adding nutmeg or essence if desired.

  2. Do not heat after mixing to maintain froth.

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 + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Wine + nutmegtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Butter
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
White sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps the butter cream into a light base.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma, flavouring the sauce as it is poured in hot.
Water
Thins the mixture and carries the wine's flavour into the sauce.

The step that matters

Quickly stir the boiled mixture into the butter and sugar. The hot liquid must be folded in quickly so it incorporates air and forms froth. If it sits or is reheated after mixing, the butter and sugar can separate and the froth collapses.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, wine. 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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