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Sauce

Jelly Pudding Sauce

A thickened sauce made from corn starch, currant jelly, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,168 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Jelly Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the corn starch smooth in ½ cup cold water.

  2. Add the currant jelly and sugar.

  3. Stir in 1 pint of cold water.

  4. Cook over heat, stirring constantly, until it boils.

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. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  2. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  3. Corn + curranttop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as its granules swell and gelatinize when heated in liquid.
Currant jelly
Adds fruity flavor and tartness, and its pectin lends a little body to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the currant jelly.

The step that matters

Cook until it boils, stirring constantly. Starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, and constant stirring keeps the cornstarch dispersed so it does not clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar. 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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