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Plum-pudding Sauce

A sauce made with sherry, brandy, sugar, lemon peel, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plum-pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the sherry, brandy, pounded sugar, and grated lemon peel (if using) in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the melted butter until well mixed.

Serve

  1. Grate nutmeg on top before 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 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

Sherry
Provides the main liquid and a sweet, nutty wine flavour to the sauce.
Brandy
Adds alcoholic aroma and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body as it blends into the liquid.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the alcohol's sharpness.

The step that matters

Stir the melted butter in until well mixed. Melted butter does not dissolve into alcohol on its own, so it must be stirred thoroughly to form a smooth, evenly emulsified sauce rather than greasy streaks.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, brandy, sugar, butter, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, brandy, sugar, butter, nutmeg. 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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