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Hard Sauce
4 ozs. (4 heaping tablespoonfuls) butter 2 ozs. (2 heaping tablespoonfuls) sugar 2 heaping tablespoonfuls chopped almonds 1 tablespoonful sherry wine or brandy Blanch the almonds and chop them very fine, add the wine or brandy. Beat up the butter and sugar to a cream, then beat in the almonds.
Chill and serve in a heap in a dainty ramequin.
A brandy butter by another name, and one of the few things in a casserole-cookery book that never sees heat. The whole success of it is in the beating and the chilling.
- Weights, not spoonfuls4 oz butter is one standard stick (½ cup); 2 oz sugar is about ¼ cup granulated. The "heaping tablespoonfuls" are a rough gloss on the ounce weights, so trust the ounces.
- An unusually low sugar ratioTwo parts butter to one part sugar makes a sauce less sweet than many modern brandy butters, which often run one to one or sweeter. Taste before you chill and add sugar if it is going onto a plain steamed pudding.
- Use confectioners' sugarThe recipe specifies only "sugar," but granulated dissolves poorly in cold butter and can leave the sauce gritty. Sifted powdered sugar creams smooth in a couple of minutes and holds the shape the recipe wants.
- Blanching the almondsPour boiling water over shelled almonds, let them stand a minute or two, then slip off the skins and dry them well before chopping. Wet almonds will make the butter weep.
- Add the liquor to the nuts firstThe recipe has you steep the chopped almonds in the tablespoon of sherry or brandy before they go into the creamed butter, rather than adding the liquid on its own.
- A ramequinHere it means a small individual porcelain dish, not the cheese preparation the word once described. Any ramekin or small bowl serves; the sauce is meant to arrive in a mound, not spread.
- ChillingAn hour in the refrigerator sets it firm. Bring it out ten minutes before serving so the first spoonful is not solid.
- YieldAbout a cup, enough for six modest servings alongside a steamed or baked pudding.
Hard sauce takes its name from its texture rather than its flavour: a sauce stiff and cold, in contrast to the poured custards and thin wine sauces that accompanied the same puddings. In Britain the same mixture is brandy butter or rum butter, fixed by long association with Christmas pudding and mince pies; American cookbooks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries commonly list it as hard sauce and pair it with anything steamed, baked or boiled and turned out hot. The almonds here suggest a more elaborate table version, and the sauce is served heaped in a small individual dish.