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Wine Pudding Sauce

A sauce combining melted butter, lemon peel or nutmeg, white wine, water, lemon peel, egg yolks, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Wine Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sweeten the melted butter and add grated lemon peel or nutmeg and white wine.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot but do not let it boil, then serve immediately.

  3. In a separate pot, combine white wine, water, and lemon peel; sweeten to taste.

  4. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and pour over the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Stir quickly and pour around the 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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  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).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce as they set gently in the warm liquid, giving it body.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot liquid over the yolks. Egg yolks scramble if they meet very hot liquid too fast. Pour slowly while stirring so the yolks warm gradually and the sauce thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, white wine, egg, 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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