Sticky toffee and steamed puddings

Assuming a dark, treacly pudding of the sticky toffee family, served hot with cream or custard.

This is among the sweetest things a kitchen sends out, and the sugar in it is not simple sugar: it is dark, caramelised and slightly bitter, from muscovado and treacle and the dates underneath. A wine has to be sweeter still or it will taste sour, and it needs its own caramel and dried-fruit register or it will sit beside the pudding rather than with it. Weight matters too, against butter and hot cream.

Pairs Perfectly

Tawny Port, Douro, Portugal. Pairs Perfectly. Years in cask turn the fruit to fig, walnut, raisin and caramel, which is the pudding read back almost note for note. It is very sweet, full-bodied and warming, so nothing is lost against the heat of the plate or the cream poured over it. A ten-year bottling sits on most supermarket shelves and costs less than a decent bottle of claret.

Pairs Well

Rutherglen Muscat, Victoria, Australia. Pairs Well. Aged in a solera under Australian heat until it pours like treacle, with the raisined sweetness of the dates and honey behind it.

Vin Santo, Tuscany, Italy. Pairs Well. Grapes dried on racks through winter, giving fig, walnut and caramel with a drier finish than the others, which suits a pudding already drowning in sauce.

Worth Seeking Out

Commandaria, Cyprus. Sun-dried Mavro and Xynisteri, made the same way for something like eight centuries: date, fig and caramel at a concentration that reads as the pudding itself. Dates against a date pudding is as direct a match as this end of the meal offers.

Avoid

Lean high-acid whites, which turn thin and sharp against caramelised sugar, and any dry wine, which the treacle strips to sourness.

Failing That

A Cream Sherry, Jerez, Spain.

If All Else Fails

Marsala, Sicily.

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