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Pudding Sauce for Any Hot Pudding

A simple sauce made from butter, sugar, flour, boiling water, and egg, flavored to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Pudding Sauce for Any Hot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and flour thoroughly.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and let it boil together.

  3. Just before serving, pour the hot mixture over the well-beaten egg.

  4. Add flavoring to taste.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps thicken the sauce as it dissolves and cooks.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Egg
Adds richness and body; its proteins thicken slightly when the hot mixture is poured over it.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot mixture over the egg. If the hot mixture is poured in too quickly, or the egg is not well beaten, the egg can scramble in lumps instead of blending smoothly into the sauce. Beating the egg well and pouring slowly while stirring helps it blend evenly.

“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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