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German Pudding Sauce

A sauce made by sweetening white wine, mixing with egg yolks, and serving over plum or boiled pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

German Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Sweeten the white wine and heat it until almost boiling.

  2. Pour the hot wine into the well-beaten egg yolks.

  3. Whisk the mixture thoroughly or blend it in a machine similar to a chocolate mill.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over plum pudding or any boiled pudding.

  2. Add a little lemon juice for a plain batter pudding if desired.

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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. White wine + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Thicken as they gently set with heat, giving the sauce body and a smooth, custard-like texture.
White wine
Supplies the liquid and acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot wine into the yolks. Egg proteins coagulate when heated, so adding very hot liquid to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Mixing in the hot wine steadily while whisking keeps the yolks warming gradually, so the sauce stays smooth.

“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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