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Dessert

Sauce for Plum Pudding

A butter, sugar, nutmeg, water, and lemon rind and juice sauce boiled until hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce for Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the water, nutmeg, and lemon rind and juice.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir the mixture over heat until it boils.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the sauce.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over heat until it boils. Constant stirring keeps the butter and sugar evenly distributed and stops them from sticking and scorching on the base of the pan, which would give the sauce a burnt taste.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, lemon. 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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