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Sauce

Plain Cold, Hard Sauce

A cold sauce of white sugar and butter beaten together and flavoured to taste, with an optional fruit version.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Plain Cold, Hard Sauce

Why it works: Butter and raspberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,308 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plain Cold, Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stir together the white sugar and butter until creamy and light.

  2. Add flavoring to taste.

  3. For a fruit version, beat in the ripe strawberries or raspberries.

  4. For a fruit version, beat in the egg white.

  5. Beat until stiff.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,308 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for a light texture.
Butter
Provides fat for a rich, creamy body and smooth mouthfeel.
Egg white
Adds protein that whips into foam, lightening and stiffening the sauce.
Strawberries or raspberries
Add fruit flavor and moisture to the fruit version of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cream the sugar and butter until light. Beating sugar into butter traps tiny air bubbles that give the sauce its light, fluffy texture. If it is under-beaten, the sauce stays dense and grainy because the sugar has not been fully worked in.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

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