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Dessert

Hard Sauce with Cream

A sauce made with sugar, butter, milk, suet, raisins, molasses, spices, eggs, gelatin, and pineapple, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 28 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and gelatin work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and 32 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-pinene, which smells pine, resin. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Stir sugar and butter until creamy.

  2. Add remaining ingredients and mix well.

  3. Serve cold.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Allspice + gelatintop 21% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  2. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Raisin + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and binding, and help the mixture set and enrich its texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and dark colour, and its acidity reacts with baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the mixture rise and lighten.
Gelatin
Forms a gel as it cools, giving the dish its set, sliceable body.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and body, helping to hold the pudding together.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, molasses, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillaabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Orangeabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, molasses, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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