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Sauce

Pudding Sauce

A simple sauce made with water, flour or cornstarch, butter, salt, nutmeg, sugar, and vinegar, served hot over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Pudding Sauce

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, flour or cornstarch, butter, salt, nutmeg, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.

  3. Serve hot over 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.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, pourable sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sauce's acidity and salt.
Vinegar
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Starch granules must reach a boil and be kept moving so they swell evenly and thicken the sauce. Stopping the stirring can leave lumps or a thin, uneven texture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, vinegar. 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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