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Vanilla Sauce
½ cup butter 1 cup cream 1 cup powdered sugar 1 tablespoon vanilla Cream butter; add sugar, beaten cream and flavoring. Heat over hot water until all is liquid. Serve hot. + cup butter 1 cup brown sugar
A butter-and-cream dessert sauce in the hard-sauce family, warmed rather than cooked. Two lines of the original need untangling before you start.
- The stray last line"+ cup butter 1 cup brown sugar" is not part of this sauce — it is the ingredient list of the following recipe, caught by the scanner. Ignore it and work from the four ingredients above.
- "Powdered sugar"In American books of this period powdered sugar usually means a fine granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Either works here since the sauce is warmed until smooth, but confectioners' will taste faintly starchy; superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match.
- "Beaten cream"Whipped cream. Whip the cup of cream to soft peaks before folding it into the creamed butter and sugar; the mixture is then warmed until liquid, so the beating mainly helps the cream combine smoothly with the butter and sugar.
- Over hot water, not over heatThe hinge of the recipe. Use a bowl set over barely simmering water and stop the moment everything is liquid. Direct heat or a real boil will split the butter out of the cream and leave you with a greasy pool.
- A tablespoon of vanillaNot a misprint, but it is roughly three times what a modern recipe of this size would call for. If that seems strong to your taste, two teaspoons gives a gentler result.
- Yield and servingAbout two cups, enough for six to eight servings. Meant to be spooned hot over steamed or baked puddings, gingerbread, or apple dumplings. It will not hold long once warm — make it as the pudding comes out.
- LeftoversChilled, it thickens and sets soft, and can be re-melted over hot water. Do not try to rescue a broken batch by beating it warm; cool it, then whisk in a spoonful of cold cream.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer — one of the many turn-of-the-century cookbooks published to sell an ingredient, in this case cocoa and baking chocolate. That commercial origin explains the book's unusually deep dessert chapter, where a plain pudding sauce like this one sits beside dozens of chocolate confections. The sauce itself descends from English hard sauce, the creamed butter-and-sugar paste served with plum pudding, softened here with whipped cream and melted rather than served cold; brandy-flavoured versions are generally traced to the same tradition, and this one is simply flavoured with vanilla instead. The instruction to heat over hot water rather than over the fire reflects a kitchen where a double boiler was presumably at hand and stovetop heat was hard to regulate.