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Dessert

Pudding- Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sugar, butter, egg yolks, starch, water, wine or brandy, milk, lemon rind, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pudding- Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light.

  2. Add the egg yolks and corn starch, mixing well.

  3. Stir in enough boiling water to achieve a thick cream consistency.

  4. Add wine or brandy to taste.

Make the custard

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

  2. Heat gently, stirring until the mixture thickens but does not boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the brandy and keep warm by the fire, stirring occasionally.

  2. Serve the sauce in a boat or tureen, or pour it over the pudding.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, helps it turn light and smooth.
Butter
Adds richness and body, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Corn starch or arrow-root
Thickens the sauce by swelling in liquid as it heats.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that gives the custard a creamy body.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the custard gently without boiling. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, so the mixture must be stirred over gentle heat. Stop once it thickens, because starch and egg proteins set as they warm and boiling can break the texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, corn, cream, wine, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, corn, cream, wine, milk. 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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