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Sauce

Liquid Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made by thickening boiling water with flour, adding brown sugar, butter, wine or peach water, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Liquid Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Thicken 1 pint of boiling water with 2 tablespoons of flour.

  2. Add 1 pint of brown sugar and let it boil.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter.

  4. Flavor with 1 tablespoon of wine or peach water and 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add the flour to boiling water. Flour must be fully dispersed in hot liquid so starch granules swell evenly; adding it to still or cool liquid, or leaving lumps, produces a lumpy sauce that will not thicken smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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