Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Pudding: Sauce

A thickened cream sauce flavored with nutmeg, sugar, corn starch, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Pudding: Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the cream with nutmeg and half the sugar to prevent burning.

  2. Mix the corn starch with the remaining sugar dry.

  3. Stir the corn starch mixture into the boiling cream and remove from heat when it thickens.

  4. Beat in the butter and strain for use.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Thin cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps prevent the cream from scorching.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Stir the corn starch mixture into the boiling cream. Corn starch must be dispersed evenly and the mixture kept moving, or it clumps. Removing it from heat as soon as it thickens prevents over-thickening and a pasty texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, corn, butter. 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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes