Hard Sauce

A standard creamed butter-and-sugar pudding sauce of the period, with one detail that keeps it off a modern table: the raw egg whites are never heated at any stage.

• Why this version failsThe whites of two eggs are beaten into the sugar and butter and the sauce goes straight onto ice to be served cold. Nothing in the method brings the egg above room temperature, so Salmonella present in or on the shell egg survives to the plate. A tablespoonful of brandy in a cupful of sugar and half a cupful of butter is nowhere near enough alcohol to make any difference.
• Serving it over hot pudding does not helpHard sauce is spooned onto steamed pudding and allowed to soften. Brief contact with a warm surface melts the butter long before the egg protein reaches a safe holding temperature; the sauce is still effectively raw when eaten.
• Held cold for hours"Put on ice until needed" meant ice-chest storage, which would generally have run warmer than a modern refrigerator, and a sauce made ahead could stand for some hours before serving. Use a current recipe if you want hard sauce.
• Extract of nutmegAn alcoholic essence sold by grocers and druggists alongside vanilla and lemon extract. It is not the same thing as oil of nutmeg, which is far stronger, and a teaspoonful of the oil would be a great deal too much.
• What the measures meanA cupful here is a half-pint, 8 fluid ounces, giving roughly 7 oz sugar to 4 oz butter -- two to one by volume, if not quite by weight. "Beat to white cream" means creaming until the mixture pales and no sugar grain is felt on the tongue.
• YieldPerhaps a cup and a half of finished sauce, possibly more once aerated; enough for roughly six servings of a steamed or boiled pudding.