Name: Pudding Sauce
Ingredients: 1 stick of cinnamon; ½ cup water; 2 tablespoons fine sugar; ¼ cup white wine; thin peel of 1 lime; 3-4 peach leaves

Why it works: Cinnamon and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Bruise the cinnamon stick and place it in a saucepan.
Add enough water to cover the cinnamon and bring to a boil.
Stir in the sugar, white wine, lime peel, and peach leaves.
Boil gently for a few minutes.
Strain the mixture and serve hot.

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.

Cinnamon + limetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together470 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together625 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lime + peachtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together130 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
White wine + peachtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together79 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cinnamon stick: Infuses the sauce with warm, aromatic flavour as it simmers.
Fine sugar: Adds sweetness and rounds out the sharpness of the wine and lime.
White wine: Adds acidity and a light fruity character to the sauce.
Lime peel: Contributes citrus aroma and a bright, fresh note.
Peach leaves: Lend a subtle almond-like, floral aroma to the infusion.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, sugar, white wine, peach):

Vanillafits better
Plumfits better
Pearfits better
Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, white wine, peach. 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.