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Dessert

A Delicious German Pudding-sauce

A sauce made from sherry or Madeira, sugar, egg yolks, and optional lemon juice, thickened over gentle heat for sweet boiled pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

A Delicious German Pudding-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the sherry or Madeira without boiling.

  2. Stir the hot mixture into the well-beaten egg yolks.

  3. Heat the sauce over a gentle fire, stirring until thickened and frothy.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over a plum or any sweet boiled 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. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sherry or madeira
Provides the liquid base and a rich, fortified wine flavour.
Fine sugar
Dissolves into the wine to add sweetness and balance the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they gently heat, giving it body and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce gently while stirring. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if the sauce gets too hot or is not stirred, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, egg. 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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