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Raspberry Butter Sauce
Put one-fourth pound of butter into a basin, slightly warm it and work in one-half pound of loaf sugar crushed and sifted. Pour in enough raspberry juice to color and flavor it, when it is ready for use.
This is a hard sauce — creamed butter and sugar flavored with fruit — meant to be spooned cold onto a hot pudding. The only real difficulty is the sugar, which is not what a modern cook would reach for by default.
- Loaf sugar, crushed and siftedLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in solid cones, broken up and sieved at home to whatever fineness was wanted. Sifted confectioners' or superfine sugar gives the same smooth result; granulated will stay gritty because nothing here dissolves it.
- QuantitiesOne-fourth pound of butter is 4 oz (1 stick, 113 g), and one-half pound of sugar is 8 oz (about 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar). That gives a 1:2 butter-to-sugar ratio by weight, within the usual range for a hard sauce, and it is worth keeping.
- "Basin"A mixing bowl. A heavy bowl holds gentle warmth better than a thin metal one, so with stainless work quickly or set it briefly over warm water.
- Slightly warm itThe hinge of the recipe. The butter should be soft enough to cream, around 65–70°F, and no warmer. If it melts, the sugar will not stay suspended and the sauce separates into an oily pool with grit at the bottom.
- Raspberry juiceCrush fresh or thawed frozen raspberries and press them through a fine sieve. The original gives no quantity, only enough to color and flavor; add it a teaspoon at a time, since too much liquid at once will split the mixture.
- Yield and servingAbout 1½ cups, enough for six to eight. Chill until firm, then serve cold in a mound or in small quenelles against something hot — steamed pudding, baked apple dumplings, a plain sponge.
- KeepingRefrigerated and covered, it holds about a week; the fresh juice, not the butter, is what limits it. It also freezes well, which the original had no way to suggest.
Hard sauces belong to the nineteenth-century pudding table, where a firm sweetened butter — brandy butter, rum butter, or a fruit version like this — was a standard cold accompaniment to a hot steamed or boiled pudding. The book is Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896), from the Waldorf, where Tschirky was maître d'hôtel rather than chef; a sauce this simple suits a hotel's need for a repertory that could be made ahead and held cold without curdling or breaking. The instruction to crush and sift loaf sugar is consistent with the 1890s, when cone sugar was still in use alongside the boxed powdered sugar that became the norm later.