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Preserve

Pudding Sauce

A sauce made with water, flour or cornstarch, butter, salt, nutmeg, sugar, vinegar, egg whites, and hot syrup or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pudding Sauce

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, flour or cornstarch, butter, salt, nutmeg, sugar, and vinegar. Cook over medium heat until thickened, stirring constantly.

Make the egg white mixture

  1. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add sugar.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix in the hot syrup or hot milk just before serving.

  2. Combine the egg white mixture with the sauce and serve immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter 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

Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks, they add airy lightness to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Hot syrup or hot milk
Adds moisture and flavor to the sauce just before serving.

The step that matters

Combine the egg white mixture with the sauce and serve immediately. Whipped egg whites are a foam held up by trapped air. Over time they lose air and deflate, so the sauce turns watery and loses its lightness if it sits.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, vinegar, egg, syrup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, vinegar, egg, syrup. 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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