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Sauce for Cottage Pudding

A simple sauce made from boiling water, brown sugar, butter, and beaten egg for cottage pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sauce for Cottage Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine boiling water, brown sugar, and butter.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring gently.

  3. Add the beaten egg and stir well to combine.

  4. Be careful not to scorch the sauce.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel flavor to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and thickens it slightly as it heats.
Boiling water
Forms the liquid base that dissolves the sugar and carries the flavors.

The step that matters

Do not scorch the sauce. Sugar and butter darken and burn quickly on the hot bottom of a pan, giving a bitter taste. Stirring gently and keeping the heat controlled prevents sticking and burnt flavor.

“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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