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Hard Sauce for Puddings, Rice, Etc
M.
Take one teacup sugar, one-half teacup butter, stir together until light; flavour with wine or essence of lemon. Smooth the top with a knife and grate nutmeg over it.
A creamed butter-and-sugar sauce that is served cold and melts into hot pudding. The whole recipe hinges on beating it long enough to go pale and fluffy.
- The teacupA nineteenth-century teacup is roughly 6 fl oz, so about 3/4 cup of sugar to 6 tablespoons (3 oz) of butter. The proportion is what matters: two parts sugar to one part butter by volume.
- Which sugarConfectioners' or superfine sugar creams smooth without grit; standard granulated will stay sandy unless beaten a long while with soft butter.
- "Until light"This is the hinge. Beat the butter alone until it is soft and pale, then work in the sugar until the mixture is almost white and holds a peak. Underbeaten hard sauce is greasy rather than airy.
- Butter temperatureSoft but not oily, around 65F. If the butter melts the sauce separates and cannot be brought back except by chilling and rebeating.
- The wineSherry, Madeira or brandy, added a teaspoon at a time. Add too much liquid at once and the emulsion breaks; a couple of tablespoons is the practical limit for this quantity.
- Essence of lemonA concentrated oil, far stronger than modern lemon extract by volume in some old bottlings. Start with a quarter teaspoon of extract, or use the grated zest of half a lemon.
- Smoothing and chillingPack into a small bowl or mound on a dish, smooth with a wet knife blade, grate nutmeg over, then refrigerate until firm. It is meant to be served cold against a hot pudding.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough for six to eight servings of steamed pudding, baked rice or apple dumplings.
Hard sauce takes its name from its texture rather than its strength: it is set firm, as against the "soft" or liquid pudding sauces thickened with flour and served hot. In Britain the wine-flavoured version is brandy butter, associated with Christmas pudding and mince pies; American and Canadian books of the 1870s carry it in wine, lemon, vanilla and rosewater variants. This one comes from The Home Cook Book, a compiled receipt book of the type that flourished after the American Civil War, in which contributors submitted family recipes over an initial or a name and the proceeds went to a charitable cause. The single letter "M." at the head is unexplained on the page hough though though it might equally be an abbreviation or a section letter, and the recipe's brevity is typical: these were recipes written by cooks for cooks who already knew what creaming butter looked like.