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Dessert

Hard Sauce

A sweet, buttery glaze made with powdered sugar, butter, white wine, and lemon juice, used as a topping for pudding or tart.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, stir the butter and powdered sugar until the mixture is the consistency of cream.

  2. Mix in the white wine and lemon juice.

  3. Beat the mixture vigorously until it forms a nearly solid mass.

Shape and serve

  1. Smooth the mixture with a knife and shape it like a pat of butter.

  2. Refrigerate until ready to serve with pudding or tart.

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 + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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 fat and richness, and firms up when chilled to hold its shape.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the butter for a fine texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and liquid that brightens the sauce and balances its sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and a bright aroma that cuts the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture vigorously until it forms a nearly solid mass. Beating incorporates air and works the sugar and liquid into the fat, so the sauce firms and holds its shape. Under-beating leaves it soft and greasy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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