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Dessert

Sauce for Ginger Pudding

A sweet sauce made with sugar, butter, egg yolk, boiling water, and folded egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sauce for Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat together the sugar and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the egg yolk and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and stir until smooth.

Finish

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently spoon the beaten egg white on top of the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps give the sauce its body as it dissolves.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps emulsify and thicken the sauce.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it adds a light, airy topping.

The step that matters

Gently spoon the beaten egg white on top of the sauce. Stiff egg white holds air only if it is not deflated. Spooning it gently keeps the peaks intact so the topping stays light rather than collapsing into 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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