Brown Sugar Sauce

An uncooked butter-and-sugar dessert sauce in the hard-sauce family, softened with cream and flavored with vanilla. The whole method rests on temperature and patience rather than heat.

• Quantities are incompleteAs printed, the amounts of butter and brown sugar are missing, and the cream is given as "cup" with no fraction. Sauces of this type are usually built on something close to equal weights of butter and sugar, with the liquid worked in a little at a time, but the original numbers cannot be recovered from the text.
• Nothing is cooked"Creamed butter" means butter beaten alone until pale and soft, not melted. There is no stove step at all; the sauce is finished entirely by beating at room temperature.
• Add the liquid slowlyThe instruction to add the cream and sugar mixture "very gradually" is the hinge. Poured in at once, the cream will not emulsify into the butter and the sauce breaks into a greasy, weeping mass.
• Butter temperatureThe recipe does not specify one, but cool room temperature (in the region of 65F) suits creaming. Butter that has gone soft and shiny will not carry the cream, and butter straight from the refrigerator will stay in lumps.
• Brown sugarBrown sugars of the period varied more in grain and moisture than today's standardised product. Modern light brown sugar works; rub out any hard lumps first, since undissolved crystals stay gritty in an uncooked sauce.
• CreamUse heavy cream. Half-and-half and milk carry too much water for the emulsion and will thin the sauce past the point of holding shape.
• Flavoring lastThe recipe adds the vanilla at the end, once the sauce is of creamy consistency.
• ServingServe cold or barely cool, spooned over hot steamed pudding, baked apples, or gingerbread, so it softens on contact. Made with around half a cup of butter it would serve roughly six to eight. It keeps several days refrigerated; beat again briefly before serving.