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Wine Sauce for Pudding

A wine-based sauce made with butter, brown sugar, flour, egg yolks, and wine, cooked to a thick custard consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wine Sauce for Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg yolks.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour.

  4. Place the mixture on the fire.

  5. Let it boil until it reaches the consistency of thick custard, stirring constantly.

Finish the sauce

  1. Heat the wine.

  2. Stir the wine into the mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Provides richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel once creamed with the sugar.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat, giving it a custard body.
Flour
Stabilises the mixture and helps it thicken so it coats the pudding.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar and butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard base while stirring constantly. Egg yolks set as they heat, so if the mixture overheats or stands still it can curdle or scorch. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth as it thickens.

“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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