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Whip Sauce for Puddings

A quick sauce made by whisking egg yolks, cream, sherry, sugar, and flavoring, then heating until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Whip Sauce for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, whisk together the egg yolks.

  2. Add the cream, sherry, sugar, and your choice of flavoring essence.

  3. Place the saucepan in a bain-marie or a larger pot of boiling water.

  4. Continue whisking until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Pour over the pudding and serve.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the set of the yolks into a silky texture.
Sherry
Adds a sharp, aromatic note that balances the sweetness and richness of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce taste balanced against the rich yolks and sherry.

The step that matters

Continue whisking until the mixture thickens. Egg yolks set when gently heated, but if the heat is too high they can scramble. Constant whisking over the bain-marie spreads heat evenly, keeping the sauce 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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