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Sauce

Pudding Sauce

A simple sauce made from water, flour, butter, lemon juice or vinegar, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starch

  1. Combine water and flour in a saucepan to make a smooth starch.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain if necessary.

  2. Sweeten to taste.

  3. Pour over butter and lemon juice (or vinegar).

  4. Cream together more butter and sugar with the flavoring.

  5. Add the starch.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells and sets when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavor of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the sharpness of the lemon or vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and water for the full 10 minutes. Starch granules swell and thicken only when heated to a boil. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and pasty, and it can taste raw from the flour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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