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Orange Hard Sauce
Select a thin orange, cut the skin into six equal parts, by cutting through the skin at the stem end and passing the knife around the orange to nearly. the blossom end; loosen and turn each piece down and remove the orange. Extract juice and mix it with yellow sugar (prepared by dropping a drop or two of "gold coloring" on white sugar while stirring it) till a ball can be formed, which place inside the orange-peel and serve. The "gold coloring" may be omitted. Lemon sauce may be made in the same way.
This is less a sauce than a confection: sugar worked with citrus juice until it holds a shape, presented inside the peel of the fruit it came from. The peel is the whole point, so cut it carefully before you touch the juice.
- The hinge: cut the peel firstScore through the skin only, from the stem end to just short of the blossom end, in six lines, then peel each strip back and free the flesh. The strips stay attached at the base and open out like petals, forming a cup on a stem. If you cut through to the blossom end the whole thing falls apart.
- Proportions are left to youNo quantities are given. A medium orange yields roughly 4-5 tablespoons of juice, and a great deal of sifted confectioners' sugar will be needed -- likely well over a cup for a few tablespoons of juice -- before the mass stops sticking to your hands. Work by feel, adding the sugar to the juice gradually rather than the reverse.
- Powdered, not granulatedThis recipe says only 'white sugar', though period hard-sauce recipes often specify fine 'pulverized' sugar. Confectioners' sugar is the closer modern match; granulated is likely to stay gritty and resist forming a smooth ball.
- "Gold coloring"A bought colorant of a kind used in kitchens of the period; its composition is not stated and would have been unregulated. The recipe itself says it may be omitted, and that is the sensible course; if you want the color, a drop of modern yellow food coloring or a pinch of turmeric does the same work.
- Not a hard sauce in the usual senseHard sauce of this era is usually creamed butter and sugar, often flavored with spirits. This one has no butter at all, which makes it firmer and more candy-like, and means it will not melt into a pudding the way a butter sauce does.
- Lemon versionLemon juice is sharper, so you may want more sugar to balance it. Taste as you go.
- Yield and servingNo yield is given; it is served alongside a steamed or boiled pudding. Make it the day it is served; the sugar ball crusts over and the peel dries out on standing.
Hard sauce is the standard nineteenth-century accompaniment to boiled and steamed puddings, and the name refers simply to its consistency: a sauce stiff enough to hold a shape, as against the pourable sauces meant to be spooned over. Versions flavored with brandy or sherry are the best known, and this one is flavored with citrus instead. The carved peel cup reflects a broader Victorian enthusiasm for table presentation on a small budget: no extra ingredient is required, only knife work. The reference to bought "gold coloring" is a useful marker of date. Aniline and mineral-based food dyes were widely sold in American groceries by the 1870s, well before any federal regulation of their contents, and this book's willingness to say the coloring "may be omitted" suggests the compilers were not entirely easy about them.