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Sauce

Milk Pudding Sauce

A sweet sauce made from sugar, eggs, milk, starch, nutmeg, and butter, cooked over a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Milk Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the butter into the sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix to a creamy froth.

  3. Wet the corn starch with cold milk and add it along with the spice.

  4. Pour in the boiling milk gradually while beating continuously.

  5. Set the mixture in a saucepan of boiling water for five minutes, stirring constantly without letting it boil.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs whisked into the mixture add richness and help thicken the sauce as they set with heat.
Arrow-root or corn-starch
Starch swells in the hot milk and thickens the sauce to a smooth, pourable consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel and a softer, more velvety texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and creams with butter to build a light, airy base.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture in the water bath without letting it boil. Egg proteins set and can curdle or scramble if overheated, while the starch needs enough heat to thicken. Stirring constantly and keeping the water below a boil gives even heat and a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, 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.

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