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Dessert

Hard Sauce for Pudding.— No. 1

A thick, sweet sauce made from butter, powdered sugar, lemon, nutmeg, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hard Sauce for Pudding.— No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and nutmeg for about 10 minutes.

  3. If desired, add the sherry wine and mix well.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a pretty dish and set aside to cool.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with the sugar to give the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and, beaten with the butter, builds the sauce's soft, thick texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness and richness of the butter.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Gradually beat in the powdered sugar. Adding sugar slowly while beating incorporates air and lets it dissolve evenly into the butter, giving a smooth, light texture instead of a grainy or greasy one.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon, sherry, 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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