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Sauce

Sauce for Suet Pudding

A sweet sauce made from sugar, butter, egg, flour, nutmeg, wine, and water for suet pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce for Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the egg, flour, and nutmeg, and mix until smooth.

Cook the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the wine and water until hot.

  2. Stir the mixture into the hot liquid and cook until it boils.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and gives a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the sauce as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the liquid base.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture into the hot liquid. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Stirring steadily while it heats disperses the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of lumping.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, wine. 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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