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Plain Cold, Hard Sauce

A cold, firm sauce made from sugar, butter, and optional fruit or flavoring.

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. In a bowl, stir together the white sugar and butter until creamy and light.

  2. Add flavoring to taste, such as raspberry or strawberry juice.

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to give the sauce a rich, smooth body and fat-based mouthfeel.
White sugar
Creamed with butter to add sweetness and help create a light, creamy texture.
Egg white
Whipped into the mixture to add air and lighten the sauce's texture when stiff.

The step that matters

Beating in the fruit and egg white until stiff. Whipping egg white traps air and lightens the sauce; under-beating leaves it dense, while over-beating can make it grainy or cause it to separate.

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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