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Sauce

Plum Pudding Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, hot water, brown sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Plum Pudding Sauce

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. Melt the butter in a granite pan over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until well mixed.

  3. Gradually pour in the hot water, stirring until cooked.

  4. Add the brown sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve as soon as the sugar has dissolved.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavor, and carries the other flavors.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the hot water, stirring until cooked. Adding the hot liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed so it does not clump. Cooking until the starch swells is what turns the mixture into a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, 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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