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Dessert

Hard Sauce

A hard butter and sugar sauce used for hot puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar, then mix in the lemon or vanilla extract.

Shape and chill

  1. Pack the mixture into a small dish and stamp it with a butter mold or the bottom of a glass.

  2. Refrigerate until very hard.

Serve

  1. Alternatively, serve it piled lightly on a fancy dish, calling it Snowdrift Sauce.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Butter
Provides richness and body, and firms as it chills so the sauce holds its shape.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a smooth, fine texture that dissolves easily into the butter.
Lemon or vanilla extract
Adds aroma and flavor that brightens the rich butter.

The step that matters

Refrigerate until very hard. Butter softens at room temperature and firms as it cools. Chilling until very hard lets the sauce keep its shape when stamped and served, instead of slumping into a soft puddle over hot pudding.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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