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Dessert

Hard Sauce

A chilled butter and powdered sugar sauce flavored with brandy, lemon, vanilla, nutmeg, and optional orange rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a warm bowl, cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and mix until very light.

  3. Beat the mixture until frothy.

  4. Add the brandy and nutmeg, then beat briskly for 5 minutes.

  5. Transfer to a dessert dish and refrigerate for 1 hour before serving.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and creams with the sugar to give the sauce a smooth body.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily, helping the sauce become light and smooth when beaten.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm alcohol flavor that balances the richness of the butter and sugar.

The step that matters

Beat until very light and frothy. Beating air into the creamed butter and sugar gives the sauce its light, smooth texture. Under-beating leaves it dense and grainy, while the chilling step firms it for serving.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, brandy, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, brandy, lemon. 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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