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Dessert

Punch Sauce for Sweet Puddings

A sauce made from sugar, water, citrus rinds, butter, flour, brandy, and white wine, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Punch Sauce for Sweet Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water.

  2. Add the lemon and orange rinds.

  3. Boil gently for 15-20 minutes.

  4. Strain out the rinds.

Finish the sauce

  1. Thicken the sauce with butter and flour.

  2. Stir in brandy and white wine.

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

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Brandy + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Sweetens the sauce and adds body as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Starch that thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Brandy
Adds warm, boozy aroma and depth of flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and fruity flavour to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 15-20 minutes. A gentle simmer lets the sugar and water reduce evenly and extracts flavour from the rinds. A hard boil can scorch the sugar and reduce the sauce too fast, leaving it bitter or uneven.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter, flour, brandy, white 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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