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Dessert

Fruit Sauce

Fruit sauce is a custard-like pudding made with milk, farina, sugar, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fruit Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Pour 10 ounces of farina into 1 quart of boiling milk and cook for 25 minutes.

  2. Add a pinch of salt, 2 ounces of sugar, and 2 ounces of butter; mix well.

  3. After 10 minutes, add 8 egg yolks and 6 egg whites whipped to a stiff froth.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a cylindrical mold and fill it three-quarters full with the pudding mixture.

  2. Cook in a bain-marie for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve and pour over fruit sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Farina
Thickens the milk into a firm, starchy base that holds the pudding's shape.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they add lightness and help the pudding rise and set.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg whites. Whites whipped to a stiff froth trap air that gives lift. If they deflate before the mixture goes into the mold, or are stirred in too hard, the pudding loses its lightness and comes out dense.

“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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