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Savory Pudding Sauce

A sauce made from sweet milk, butter, flour, sugar, salt, egg white, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Savory Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the thickened milk

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with a little cold water until smooth.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk and cook for five minutes.

  4. Add a little salt to the thickened milk.

Finish the sauce

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

  2. Stir in the vanilla and then mix into the cool thickened milk.

  3. Gradually fold in the beaten egg white.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sauce-like body as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg white
Adds lightness and airy body when beaten and folded into the sauce.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps cream the butter into a smooth base.

The step that matters

Gradually fold in the beaten egg white. Adding the egg white all at once or into a hot mixture can deflate it or cause it to scramble. Folding gently and gradually keeps the sauce light and evenly textured.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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

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