Hard Sauce (Beat cup sugar and cup butter)

This is a standard hard sauce enriched with uncooked egg white, and that addition is what puts it out of reach. Nothing in the method brings the eggs anywhere near a safe temperature, and the sauce is then held cold for an indefinite period.

• Raw egg white, never heatedThe whites of two eggs go in raw and stay raw. Hard sauce is spooned onto hot pudding at the table but the contact is brief and superficial; the interior never approaches the 160F needed to inactivate Salmonella. Shell eggs remain a recognised source of it..
• The brandy does nothingOne tablespoon of spirit distributed through roughly a cup and a half of sugar and butter gives an alcohol concentration of a few percent at most. That is nowhere near enough to sanitise anything, and the notion that liquor makes a raw-egg preparation safe is folklore.
• "Put on ice until needed"Ice storage in this period generally ran warmer than modern refrigeration, and the recipe sets no limit on how long the sauce waits. A sugar-and-fat mixture holding raw egg protein at that sort of temperature for an open-ended period is the condition modern food-safety guidance warns about.
• Who eats itHard sauce goes on Christmas and plum puddings, which means the table often includes children, older relatives and sometimes a pregnant guest — the groups for whom raw egg carries the greatest consequence.
• If you want hard sauceClassic hard sauce is only butter, sugar and a flavouring; the egg white here is an enrichment, not a structural necessity. Use a current recipe, or one calling for pasteurised egg product if you want the aerated texture.