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Wine Sauce
1/2 cup butter 1 cup powdered sugar 3 tablespoons Sherry or Madeira wine Slight grating nutmeg Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and wine slowly; pile on glass dish, and sprinkle with grated nutmeg. ¼ cup butter 1 cup powdered sugar 2 tablespoon brandy
This is a hard sauce in the Farmer manner: creamed butter and sugar carried by wine rather than heat, meant to melt over a hot steamed or baked pudding.
- Powdered sugarIn this book powdered sugar means a fine granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Confectioners' works and gives a smoother, slightly starchy sauce; superfine granulated is closer to the original texture.
- Add the wine drop by dropThis is the hinge. Butter and sugar will take up only so much liquid at once, and three tablespoons poured in quickly will curdle the sauce into a grainy, weeping mess. Beat in a teaspoon at a time and stop if it looks slack.
- Butter temperatureCool room temperature, around 65F. Too warm and it will not hold the piled shape; too cold and it will not take the wine.
- Sherry or MadeiraThe recipe does not specify a style; a medium or sweet one suits this sauce better than a bone-dry fino. Avoid supermarket "cooking sherry," which is salted.
- ServingPiled on a glass dish implies it reaches the table firm and unmelted alongside the pudding, so the heat of the pudding does the melting. Chill it firm before serving in warm weather.
- YieldAround a cup and a quarter, enough for six to eight servings of pudding. It keeps a week covered in the refrigerator; let it soften before serving.
- AlcoholThe wine is never cooked, so it stays in the sauce. Worth noting for anyone serving children or guests who avoid alcohol.
Hard sauce of this kind was the standard accompaniment to steamed and boiled puddings across nineteenth-century British and American cookery, and Fannie Farmer's book gives a run of variations built on the same base of creamed butter and sugar with a flavoring beaten in: brandy, sherry, vanilla, sometimes fruit juice. The name is generally explained by contrast with the thin, pourable "soft" or liquid sauces served for the same purpose.