Skip to main content
Sauce

Hard Sauce

A sweet sauce made with butter, sugar, nutmeg, molasses, lemon juice, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub four ounces butter and four ounces sugar until smooth, but not creamy, and sprinkle one teaspoonful ground nutmeg over it.

  2. Put the mixture in a dish and set aside to cool until ready to serve.

  3. Boil one cup molasses and one and one-half teaspoons butter for eight minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in two tablespoons lemon juice and a little salt.

  5. Add one tablespoonful vinegar if desired in place of lemon juice.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

236Calories
1 gProtein
12 gFat
33 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Molasses1 tbsp (20g)58
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to give the sauce a rich, smooth body and fat-based mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps blend the butter into a smooth mixture.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep sweetness and a robust flavor to the boiled portion.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, sweet flavors of the sauce.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. Acid added while the molasses is still very hot can be lost to evaporation or change the flavor balance, so the lemon is best stirred in off the heat once the boiling is done.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg, molasses, vinegar. 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

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes