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Sauce

Wine Sauce for Plum Pudding

A sauce made by creaming butter and sugar, adding wine, and heating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Wine Sauce for Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Slowly add the wine to the mixture.

Heat and serve

  1. Place the bowl in hot water and heat for 45 minutes without stirring or pouring out.

  2. Serve when ready.

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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

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, creamy body to the sauce.
Sugar
Creams with the butter and adds sweetness to the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma, giving the sauce its characteristic flavor.

The step that matters

Heating in hot water without stirring. The butter and sugar mixture is an emulsion that can separate or turn greasy if it is heated too hard. Keeping the water hot rather than boiling and leaving the bowl undisturbed lets the sauce warm gently and hold together.

“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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