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Dessert

Plum Pudding Sauce

A sweet, spiced sauce made with water, citrus rinds, sugar, butter, brandy, rum, sherry, and optional curacao.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Plum Pudding Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Plum Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the water with the thin rind of half a lemon and a quarter of a Seville orange for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid into a bowl with the melted butter.

  3. Stir in the brandy, rum, and sherry.

  4. Simmer the mixture over low heat for 5 minutes, mixing well.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Rum + sherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the citrus and spirits.
Lemon and seville orange rind
Infuses the liquid with aromatic citrus oils and flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture over low heat. Alcohol and butter can separate or scorch if overheated, so gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth while the alcohol mellows and the flavours blend.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, butter, brandy, rum, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, butter, brandy, rum, sherry. 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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