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Dessert

Plain Cold, Hard Sauce

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

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 egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Plain Cold, Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add flavoring to taste.

  3. For a fruity version, mix in the mashed strawberries or raspberries.

  4. If desired, fold in the beaten egg white until well combined.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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 richness and a smooth, spreadable body.
Strawberries or raspberries
Add fruity flavor and a little moisture when mashed into the sauce.
Egg white
Adds airiness and lightness when beaten and folded in.

The step that matters

Creaming the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Sugar crystals cut into the butter and trap air, which gives the sauce its light texture. If creaming is cut short, the sauce stays dense and grainy.

“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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