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Sauce

Hard Sauce

A sweet sauce made from confectioners' sugar, butter, and egg whites, served over pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine confectioners' sugar and softened butter.

  2. Beat in the egg whites until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

  3. Serve as a sauce over pudding.

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. 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

Confectioners' sugar
Provides sweetness and dissolves into the butter to give the sauce a smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and sets firm as it cools, giving the sauce its body.
Egg whites
Whip into the mixture to lighten its texture and make it smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Beating in the egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten in until the mixture is fully smooth; if the butter is too cold or lumpy, the sauce can stay grainy. Softened butter blends evenly with sugar, which helps the sauce reach a creamy texture.

“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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