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Brandy Butter Sauce for Sweets
Beat to a cream the desired quantity of granulated sugar with half that amount of butter, add a little brandy and essence of nutmeg; place on ice and use as required.
This is hard sauce under a French-leaning name: an uncooked, chilled butter-and-sugar cream spooned onto hot puddings, where it melts into a sauce. The whole thing hinges on beating cold-ish but pliable butter long enough to dissolve the sugar and hold air.
- A workable quantityOscar gives ratio, not amount. One cup granulated sugar to half a cup (1 stick, 4 oz) butter makes roughly 1 1/4 cups, enough for six to eight servings of plum pudding or steamed sponge.
- Sugar choiceGranulated will stay faintly gritty unless creamed hard for several minutes with softened butter. Confectioners' sugar, standard in later hard-sauce recipes, gives a smooth result immediately; superfine granulated is the middle path if you want the period texture without the sand.
- Essence of nutmegA commercial flavouring oil of the period, now uncommon on shelves. A scant 1/4 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg per cup of sugar does the same work; ground nutmeg from a jar is flatter and needs a slightly heavier hand.
- "A little brandy"One to two tablespoons per cup of sugar. Add it a teaspoon at a time at the end and keep beating, or the emulsion breaks and the sauce weeps liquid; if it does split, chill it and beat again.
- Butter temperatureCool room temperature, around 65F. Butter that has gone greasy and translucent will not hold the sugar and the sauce turns oily rather than fluffy.
- "Place on ice"Probably the ice chest, though the phrase could equally mean setting the bowl directly on ice, as period kitchens often did. Refrigerate at least an hour so it firms; it keeps a week covered, and freezes well. Serve it cold and stiff against something hot so it collapses on the plate.
- SaltButter of this period was usually salted, often for keeping. If using unsalted, add a pinch, otherwise the sugar reads as flat and one-note.
Hard sauce is the American name for what the English call brandy butter, the Christmas-pudding accompaniment par excellence, generally traced to the boiled puddings and mince pies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the name is often said to distinguish it from the pourable "soft" dessert sauces of custard and wine. Its appearance in Oscar Tschirky's book, compiled from the working repertoire of the Waldorf's kitchens around the turn of the twentieth century, reflects how thoroughly the American grand hotel absorbed British pudding culture alongside its French cookery. The instruction to "place on ice" suits the entry: this is a kitchen that stored cold things in an ice chest, and a sauce whose entire point is to be served firm and chilled against something steaming.