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Orange Sauce
Six tablespoonfuls of fresh butter, one cup confectioners' sugar. Cream the butter and sugar together and add the juice of a small orange slowly; stir in the grated rind.
An uncooked butter-and-sugar sauce in the hard sauce family, thickened by creaming rather than heat. It comes together in five minutes and lives or dies on how slowly the juice goes in.
- The hinge: add the juice by dropsButter and citrus juice are an emulsion waiting to break. Beat the juice in a teaspoon at a time, letting each addition disappear before the next, or the sauce will curdle and weep.
- Six tablespoonfuls of butterThat is 3 oz, or three-quarters of a standard American stick. Have it properly soft — around 65F, giving to a finger but not greasy — since there is no heat here to help it along.
- "Fresh butter"In older books this means unsalted and recently churned, as opposed to the salted, longer-keeping kind. Use unsalted; a pinch of salt added deliberately at the end sharpens the orange.
- Confectioners' sugarModern confectioners' sugar contains up to about 3 percent cornstarch, which period powdered sugar generally did not. It works fine here; sift it if it has been sitting in the cupboard.
- Juice of a small orangeRoughly 3 tablespoons. Taste as you go and stop when the sauce is as sharp as you want — more juice than the butter can hold will slacken it into a glaze.
- Zest before you cutGrate the rind off the whole orange first, taking only the coloured layer, then halve and juice it. Stirring the zest in last keeps the oils bright.
- Yield and servingAbout one cup, enough for six to eight servings. Chill until firm and serve cold on hot steamed or baked puddings, gingerbread, or plain cake — the contrast of cold sauce melting into hot pudding is the whole point.
- KeepingRefrigerate covered for up to a week; it is butter and sugar and nothing perishable beyond that. Let it stand 15 minutes before serving so it spreads rather than shatters.
This is hard sauce, the uncooked pudding sauce familiar on English and American dessert tables through the nineteenth century — hard sauce is chiefly the American term, the British equivalent being brandy butter — dressed with orange instead of the usual brandy or vanilla. The name is generally explained by its texture: unlike a stirred custard or a boiled sauce, it is served firm and cold, softening only against the heat of the pudding. Sauces like this one solved a real problem for the cook: they could be made hours ahead, held in a cool larder, and required no attention at the moment the pudding came out of the steamer.