Skip to main content
Sauce

Hard Sauce

A sweet butter glaze made with powdered sugar, vanilla, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar, one teaspoon at a time, and beat until light and creamy.

  3. Stir in vanilla and hot water to combine.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming it with sugar traps air and gives the sauce its light, smooth body.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the fat to provide sweetness and body without grittiness.
Hot water
Loosens the mixture slightly so it blends smoothly and spreads easily.

The step that matters

Adding the powdered sugar gradually. Adding sugar a little at a time lets it blend fully into the butter. Dumping it in at once can leave lumps and a grainy texture, and the sauce will not become light and creamy.

“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.

More hard sauce recipes

for Puddings 9for Hot Puddings 5 See all 143 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes