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Sauce

Plain Sauce for Puddings

A light sauce made from butter, sugar, egg yolk, flour, vanilla, and boiling water or wine, served over puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Plain Sauce for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until light.

  2. Add the egg yolk and flour, and beat until very light.

  3. Flavor with vanilla.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the boiling water or wine.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when creamed with butter, helps trap air for a light texture.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and helps bind the fat and liquid into a smooth mixture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly and gives it body.

The step that matters

Beat the butter and sugar until light. Creaming works air into the butter while sugar crystals cut into the fat. If this step is rushed, the sauce stays dense instead of light and smooth.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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