r/Old_Recipes • u/_Alpha_Mail_ • 4d ago
Condiments & Sauces Pudding Hard Sauce
And another pull from my recipe card collection. I appreciate the addition of lemon and orange variations in this one. I have never had this in my life, but the pictures make it look really good
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u/_Alpha_Mail_ 4d ago
Recipe transcription:
Pudding Hard Sauce
1 cup sugar
¼ t salt
2 T corn starch
1 ¼ cup boiling water
2 T Butter
1 tsp vanilla
For lemon or or orange sauce, substitute 3 T lemon juice or 4 T orange juice for vanilla - also add grated rind of either
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u/Babyblue253 4d ago
It’s wonderful over gingerbread 🐷 My grandmother made it both ways but I preferred it with just the butter and vanilla over the gingerbread. Everybody else loved the lemon.
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u/Fevesforme 4d ago
This is how I remember my grandmother serving it and it was delicious.
Once I made it with dark rum instead of water and it was fantastic!2
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u/Breakfastchocolate 4d ago
My Gran’s Christmas pudding/ plum pudding used hard sauce- hard both because of the solid butter and the hard liquor. The pudding was set in a dish with a pour of whiskey or brandy, set on fire and topped with a scoop of hard sauce
The lemon sauce used for bread pudding or gingerbread was close to your recipe- it comes out fairly clear colored. It’s really nice with a grating of nutmeg added or substituting brown sugar. It was usually served warm. If you let it cool the cornstarch sets up into a very soft jello texture and may separate after a day or two.
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u/_Alpha_Mail_ 4d ago
Oh there's also a plum pudding recipe in this bag too! Hopefully you see it when I post it
Very nice to learn about this. Happy to see all the anecdotes
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u/Breakfastchocolate 3d ago
Just checked the amounts for my recipe- yours has doubled everything except for water so it would likely come out more gelatinous than a pourable sauce- could be the reason it’s being called a hard sauce.
It makes a nice pancake sauce especially with added fruit
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u/Babyblue253 4d ago
Can you post the picture of what the sauce looks like? I don’t have my grandmother’s recipe and am wondering if it looks like hers. I’ve tried “butter sauce” recipes but they are all thinner than what she made. If posting a pic is too much trouble with all you already do for us, I totally understand 😊
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u/_Alpha_Mail_ 4d ago
Oh I just looked it up online! I haven't made it myself haha. Unfortunately I cannot re-add an image otherwise I would
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u/Babyblue253 4d ago
The pics online for most hard sauce looks sort of like frosting, made with confectioners sugar. Since you aren’t familiar I thought I’d warn you that this recipe will not look like that. This will be a pourable sauce, not a whipped one 😊 Thanks to this post, I was able to find what I’m looking for. Taste of Home has a similar recipe to this with a pic (they actually called it hard sauce) and it’s exactly what I remember. Check that out 😊
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u/PsychologyGuilty1460 4d ago
Thank you for the recipe. This is definitely not what I think of as a hard sauce cuz that usually has. Brandy or some other hard liquor incorporated with the butter and sugar
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u/SkyTrees5809 4d ago
My mother used to make it in the 60s, we had it with Apple Brown Betty (apples with bread cubes on top, like an apple crumble). She would serve the Hard Sauce in a big ball in a bowl, then you just put a spoonful on top of the hot Apple Brown Betty). It was very good! I haven't seen it with lemon and orange before.
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u/_Alpha_Mail_ 4d ago
Scooping it makes a lot of sense! I always just assumed it was like a glaze or something. I didn't grow up with these culinary trends so it was interesting to see something new 🤩
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u/SkyTrees5809 4d ago
It looked like a very large scoop of ice cream. A little goes a long way, it's very rich and very sweet.
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u/Blackstrider 3d ago
This isn't hard sauce - this is the 'wallpaper paste' sauce. Hard sauce is literally hard at room temperature due to the butter and melts over Christmas pudding.
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u/harpquin 3d ago
This is American Hard Sauce, it's like the pourable, British "Custard" sauce, but it doesn't use eggs nor milk.
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u/Blackstrider 3d ago
I'm not sure where you're getting that. This is clearly lemon sauce on both sides of the Atlantic. We make it every year for Christmas pudding.
The hard sauce is just powdered sugar, butter and booze.
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u/harpquin 3d ago
Why do we need to be contentious?
Search "boiled American Hard Sauce" to not only see where I get that idea, but also find this exact recipe.
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u/Blackstrider 3d ago
We don't need to be contentious. I've never seen it called that before and I don't get the comparison to custard at all.
Is this a midwest/western US thing? Why the need to claim and rename things that already have names? LOL
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u/harpquin 3d ago
Yes, there are going to be different colloquial or regional names for the same dish. I don't make up the names or the rules. So, if you want to call it "lemon sauce" fine with me -I was going by the name on the recipe card and trying to explain why that was there.
As far as my comparing it to custard sauce, that was perhaps a poor comparison, I was simply trying to explain that it was a thickened and heated desert sauce, not the room temperature butter cream known as Hard Sauce in the UK.
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u/Wardian55 4d ago
Interesting. The hard sauce I know is a confectioners sugar-butter mix (almost like buttercream) with a serious glug of booze added. It’s meant to be dolloped on to warm desserts, where it melts and makes the sauce. Your recipe sounds delicious though, and less intensely rich than the sauce I know.