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Dessert

Hard Sauce

A sweet sauce made from butter, powdered sugar, wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together until light.

  2. Add the wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg, then beat until the mixture is several shades lighter and creamy.

Shape and chill

  1. Shape the mixture with a broad knife dipped in cold water and stamp with a wooden mold that has been scalded and dipped in cold water.

  2. Chill on ice until ready to serve.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat that makes the sauce rich and gives it a smooth, creamy body.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and, when creamed with butter, helps create a light, smooth texture.
Wine
Adds liquid and acidity that brighten the sweetness and round out the flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and butter.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and powdered sugar until light. Beating air into softened butter with sugar creates a light, smooth structure. Under-creaming leaves a dense, grainy sauce, while the sauce must stay cold afterward so the butter firms enough to hold its shape when molded.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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