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Sauce

Pudding Sauce

A sauce made by sweetening melted butter, adding lemon peel or nutmeg, and stirring in white wine, then heating until hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Pudding Sauce

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 ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sweeten the melted butter.

  2. Add grated lemon peel or nutmeg.

  3. Stir in white wine.

  4. Heat the mixture until hot, but do not boil.

  5. 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. 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Melted butter
Provides richness and a smooth, fatty body to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and a bright, aromatic flavour that balances the butter.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until hot, but do not boil.. Boiling can cause the butter fat and liquid to separate, leaving the sauce greasy and broken rather than smooth. Gentle heat keeps the emulsion stable and the flavours intact.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

More pudding sauce recipes

Plum 71German 18Plain 16Sweet 16Cabinet 10Cottage 10 See all 364 →

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