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Dessert

Hard Sauce

A sweet butter and sugar sauce with currant jelly or brandy, optionally spiced with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,377 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Hard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Add the currant jelly (or brandy, wine, or lemon juice) and mix well.

  3. If desired, grate a little nutmeg over the mixture.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour before 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 + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the creamed butter for a smooth texture.
Butter
Provides fat and a rich, creamy body that carries the flavor.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor, with the jelly's acidity balancing the richness.

The step that matters

Chill for 1 hour before serving. Cold chilling firms the butter so the sauce sets to a spoonable, scoopable consistency. Serving it straight from mixing leaves it soft and loose.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, currant):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, currant. 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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