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Hard Sauce Fob Chbistmas Plum Pudding

A light, fluffy sauce made from powdered sugar, butter, cream of tartar, egg white, and flavoring, served with plum pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hard Sauce Fob Chbistmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine powdered sugar, butter, cream of tartar, and egg white.

  2. Beat the mixture until very light and fluffy.

  3. Add lemon flavoring or your preferred flavor and mix well.

Chill and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a saucer and smooth the top.

  2. Place the saucer in a cool place or on ice until ready to serve.

  3. Slice the hard sauce and place a slice on top of the pudding when serving.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Dissolves smoothly into the fat and adds sweetness to the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and firms as it chills to hold its shape.
Egg white
Whipped with the sugar, it adds air and a light, fluffy texture.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg white so the sauce stays light and holds its volume.

The step that matters

Beating until very light and fluffy. Beating incorporates air into the butter and egg white mixture, which gives the sauce its light texture. Under-beating leaves it dense, and the cream of tartar helps the foam stay stable while it sets.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, egg. 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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