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Sauce

German Sauce for Puddings

A sauce made from egg yolks, sherry or brandy, saccharine, and optional cream or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,038 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

German Sauce for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the saccharine in the sherry or brandy.

  2. In a small saucepan, combine the yolks and the sherry mixture.

  3. Whisk over low heat until the sauce is frothy.

  4. If too thick, add cream or water to thin it.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  2. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + sherrytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 and give it a rich, smooth body as they warm.
Dry sherry or brandy
Provides flavour and liquid that helps the sauce stay loose and smooth.
Saccharine
Adds sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisk over low heat until the sauce is frothy. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the heat is too high, the yolks can scramble, leaving lumps instead of a smooth sauce.

“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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