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Dessert

Plum Pudding Sauce

A warm sauce made from egg yolks, powdered sugar, milk, lemon rind, and brandy, served with plum pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Plum Pudding Sauce

Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Plum Pudding Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, sugar, milk, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Stir over low heat until the mixture thickens, but do not let it boil.

  4. Add the brandy and let the sauce heat by the side of the fire, stirring continuously.

Serve

  1. Serve in a sauceboat or tureen.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Their proteins set as they warm, thickening the sauce into a smooth, custard-like texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and a creamy, rich body for the yolks to thicken.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the yolks and brandy.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat without boiling. Egg yolk proteins set gradually as they warm. If the heat is too high or the sauce boils, they tighten too fast and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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