Skip to main content
Sauce

Marrow Pudding Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, flour, sugar, butter, madeira, and lemon juice, simmered until boiling and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Marrow Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, work the egg yolks over low heat.

  2. Add flour, sugar, butter, madeira, and lemon juice.

  3. Stir continuously until the mixture reaches a boil.

  4. Pass the sauce through a metal strainer and serve.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and set, giving it a rich, custard-like body.
Flour
Stabilizes the sauce and helps it hold a smooth, thick texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the wine and lemon.
Madeira
Adds aromatic depth and a fortified wine flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts its richness.

The step that matters

Stirring continuously up to the boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot or are left unstirred they can scramble or curdle. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of setting in lumps.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, sugar, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar, butter. 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.

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes