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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made from egg yolks, lemon, cinnamon, butter, sugar, and grape juice, served with pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Rub the butter into the sugar.

  3. Add the yolks, lemon juice, lemon rind, and cinnamon; beat for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the grape juice while mixing vigorously.

  5. Place the mixture in a saucepan over boiling water and continue to beat without letting it boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with pudding.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + grapetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + grapetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

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

  5. Butter + grapetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,028 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and set, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and richer flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it blend smoothly with the butter.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma from the juice and grated rind.
Grape juice
Provides the liquid base and fruity sweetness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture below boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but if the mixture boils they can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, cinnamon, 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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