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Dessert

Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made with water, acid, sugar, butter, corn starch, wine, and flavoring.

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

Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make the water tart with tartaric or citric acid.

  2. Add enough sugar to make the sauce very sweet.

  3. Place over a hot fire and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the butter and corn starch paste.

Finish

  1. When nearly cold, stir in the wine and flavoring.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Provides the sweetness that balances the acid.
Tartaric or citric acid
Adds tartness that brightens and balances the sweetness.
Wine
Adds flavor and a light acidity to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the wine and flavoring when nearly cold. Heat drives off alcohol and volatile aroma compounds. Adding the wine and flavoring once the sauce has cooled keeps more of their taste and smell in the finished sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, corn, 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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