Home › Ice-Creams and Frozen Desserts › Strawberry or Raspberry Sauce
Strawberry or Raspberry Sauce
1/4 cup butter or butter substitute 1 cup powdered sugar 1 egg-white 1 cup strawberries or raspberries Cream the butter or butter substitute, add the sugar gradually, the stiffly beaten egg-whites, and the mashed berries. Beat until well mixed and foamy. A little lemon-juice will improve the flavor.
This is a fruit-flavored hard sauce, meant to be spooned over frozen desserts. Nothing in it is ever heated, and the raw egg white is the problem.
- Why it fails todayThe beaten egg white is beaten in raw and the sauce is served cold, so no step brings the egg to a temperature that would destroy Salmonella. Uncooked egg white in foamy sauces of this kind was unremarkable in cookbooks of the 1920s and 1930s; that is no longer considered safe, and the risk is highest for children, pregnant women, the elderly and anyone immune-compromised. If you want a berry sauce for a cold dessert, use a current recipe.
- Holding time makes it worseNothing here is cooked, so if the sauce is mixed ahead and left standing at room temperature, any contamination in the egg has the opportunity to multiply. The recipe gives no holding instructions either way.
- Butter substituteMost likely oleomargarine, which in this period was often sold uncolored, though vegetable shortening was also used this way. Either was an economy swap rather than a functional improvement on butter.
- Powdered sugarConfectioners' sugar, then as now sifted fine and cut with a little starch to keep it loose. It dissolves into creamed fat without graininess, which is why hard sauces call for it rather than granulated.
- YieldRoughly two cups of soft sauce once beaten foamy; the recipe does not say what it is to be served with or how many it serves.