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Dessert

Pudding Sauce, No. 2

A sweet sauce made from boiling water, butter, flour, eggs, and sugar, thickened to a custard-like consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a pot, combine boiling water and a pinch of salt.

  2. Add butter and stir until melted.

  3. Mix flour with cold water, then stir into the boiling mixture.

  4. Boil until it thickens like soft custard.

Finish and serve

  1. Set aside and beat eggs until light.

  2. In a bowl, cream together the beaten eggs and sugar.

  3. Pour half of the hot mixture into the egg mixture, stirring well.

  4. Serve immediately and reserve the rest for a second serving.

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 + flourtop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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 liquid into a soft, smooth custard-like sauce.
Eggs
Enrich the sauce and add body and a richer texture when beaten in.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savory-leaning starch and egg.

The step that matters

Pour half of the hot mixture into the egg mixture, stirring well. Adding hot liquid to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Stirring constantly while pouring gradually raises the egg temperature so the sauce stays smooth.

“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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