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Cranberry Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, water, cranberry juice, cornstarch, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes.

  2. Add cranberry juice and boil again.

  3. For a thicker sauce, stir cornstarch in a little water until smooth, then add to the mixture.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Add butter and lemon juice to enhance the flavor.

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. Cranberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cranberry + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together291 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the sharp tartness of the cranberries.
Cranberry juice
Forms the liquid base and supplies the fruit flavor and tartness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a looser, spoonable body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and sharpens the fruit taste.

The step that matters

Thickening with cornstarch. Cornstarch clumps if it goes into hot liquid dry, so it must be fully smoothed in cold water first. Starch granules thicken only when heated, so the sauce needs to keep cooking after it is added to set evenly.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon. 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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