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Dessert

Three Good Pudding Sauces

Three pudding sauces made with eggs, sugar, sherry, butter, and other ingredients, each prepared by beating and cooking over hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Three Good Pudding Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the egg base

  1. Beat the eggs well.

  2. Add sugar and beat for ten minutes.

  3. Flavor with sherry.

  4. Set over hot water and beat until thick.

Make the butter and sugar base

  1. In a bowl, beat butter and sugar together.

  2. Add eggs and beat well.

  3. When ready to cook, add sherry and place over boiling water.

  4. Cook for ten minutes, stirring often.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar while beating.

  3. Add wine and cream little by little until smooth.

  4. Place the bowl in hot water and stir until creamy.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and thicken the sauce as they are heated over hot water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps give it a smooth texture when beaten.
Sherry
Adds aroma and flavor to the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and smooths its texture when added gradually.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the sauce to a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Set over hot water and beat until thick. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Over-heating or stopping too early can leave the sauce scrambled or thin, so keep the water hot, not boiling, and beat constantly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, sherry, butter, cream, 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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