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Sauce

Milk-pudding Sauce

A thickened sauce made from eggs, sugar, butter, milk, arrowroot or cornstarch, and nutmeg or mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Milk-pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the eggs until stiff.

  2. Rub the butter into the sugar until creamy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Incorporate the arrowroot or cornstarch mixture and the spice.

  5. Gradually pour in the boiling milk while beating continuously.

  6. Place the mixture in a saucepan over boiling water for 5 minutes, stirring constantly without letting it boil.

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. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Add richness and body, and help thicken the sauce as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, gives the sauce a smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a smooth, creamy texture.
Arrowroot or cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body without making it grainy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, and its heat helps set the sauce gently.

The step that matters

Place the mixture in a saucepan over boiling water for 5 minutes, stirring constantly without letting it boil.. Eggs thicken gently with heat but scramble if overheated. Gentle, constant stirring over simmering water keeps the sauce smooth, while the starch thickens it evenly.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, nutmeg, butter. 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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