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Dessert

Hard Sauce

A buttery almond sauce 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 almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the sherry or brandy and the minced almonds.

  3. Mix well and serve in a heap, typically with plum 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 + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  2. Almond + sherrytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body that carries the other flavours.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, when beaten with butter, helps it become light and creamy.
Sweet almonds
Adds nutty flavour and a fine, slightly grainy texture to the sauce.
Bitter almonds
Adds a stronger, more pronounced almond aroma and flavour.
Sherry or brandy
Adds aromatic depth and a warm, boozy flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Beating softened butter with sugar traps air and dissolves the sugar into the fat, giving a smooth, light texture. If the butter is too cold, it stays lumpy and the sugar stays gritty.

“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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