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Preserve

Elegant Pudding Sauce

A sauce made from sugar, butter, flour, egg white, boiling water, and wine, brandy, or lemon juice.

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 ↓

Elegant Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  3. Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form and fold it into the mixture.

  4. Pour the boiling water into the bowl while stirring quickly.

  5. Add wine, brandy, or lemon juice 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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 helps cream with the butter to give body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smooth, mellow texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it combines with the hot liquid.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it adds lightness and an airy texture.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water while stirring quickly. Adding the boiling water all at once while stirring prevents lumps forming as the flour starches hydrate and thicken. Pouring slowly or stirring too little can leave clumps in the sauce.

“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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