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Sauce

Wine Pudding Sauce

A sauce made with melted butter, lemon peel, white wine, water, and egg yolks, sweetened to taste.

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

Make the butter sauce

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

  2. Stir in the white wine and heat until hot, but do not boil.

  3. Serve immediately.

Make the wine sauce

  1. In a separate pot, combine white wine, water, and lemon peel. Sweeten to taste.

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

  3. 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it body and richness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
White wine
Provides acidity and aromatic flavor that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce to taste.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling liquid over the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Pouring off the heat and stirring constantly brings them up in temperature gently, so 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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