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Dessert

Vanilla or Lemon Sauce for Pudding

A sauce made from butter, sugar, water, cornstarch, and lemon or vanilla, cooked until clear and poured over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Vanilla or Lemon Sauce for Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl and gradually mix in the sugar.

  2. Add the lemon juice or vanilla and beat until very light.

Cook the sauce

  1. Moisten the cornstarch in a little water, then pour in 2 cups of boiling water.

  2. Cook the mixture until clear.

  3. Add the grated rind of lemon.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the butter, sugar, and lemon juice just before serving.

  2. Stir gently to combine.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, helps it become light and airy.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling water into a glossy sauce as its starch gelatinizes.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind.

The step that matters

Pour the hot mixture over the butter, sugar, and lemon juice just before serving. The cornstarch thickens only when it is heated and boiled, so the sauce must be hot and cooked until clear. Letting it cool before combining can leave it thin and unevenly mixed, so combine gently and serve promptly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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