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Sauce

Hard Sauce

A sauce made from butter, sugar, wine, lemon juice, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Warm the butter.

  2. Rub the butter into the sugar to form a light cream.

  3. Add the lemon juice and wine.

  4. Mould the mixture as desired and set aside to cool.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, gives it a light, smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and creating a smooth, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Supplies acidity and bright lemon flavour that balances the sweetness.
Wine
Adds liquid and aromatic depth to the mixture.

The step that matters

Rub the butter into the sugar to form a light cream. Creaming works air and fat into the sugar, so the mixture turns light and smooth rather than grainy. Soft butter blends more evenly; if it is too hot or melted, the cream will not form properly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, wine. 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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