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Dessert

Plum Pudding Sauce

A sauce made from sugar, butter, egg yolks, wine or brandy, salt, and hot cream or milk, thickened over medium heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Plum Pudding Sauce

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plum Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and creamy.

  2. Add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs.

  3. Stir in the wine or brandy and salt.

  4. Mix in the hot cream or milk and beat well.

Cook the sauce

  1. Place the mixture in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir until it thickens like cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps cream with the butter to create a light texture.
Butter
Adds richness and body, and creaming it traps air for a lighter texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set with heat, and add richness.
Wine or brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, complex flavor to the sauce.
Cream or milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir over medium heat until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but they can curdle or scramble if the mixture overheats or is left unstirred. Stir steadily over medium heat and stop once the sauce thickens like cream.

“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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