1. Forum
  2. fidonet
  3. COOKING

  • hard sauce

    From JIM WELLER@1:135/392 to DAVE DRUM on Sunday, October 02, 2022 20:27:00

    Quoting Dave Drum to Jim Weller <=-

    I'd probably make the hard sauce without the brandy tho.

    The alcohol cooks out.

    Not really, if you add it in AFTER the five minute boil.

    Quibbles.

    Not at all. She doesn't want any alcohol in her food.

    But that recipe calls for eight cups of ingredients so it's more
    like eight servings

    The hard sauce calls for *MUCH* less than 8 cups.

    The PUDDING contains eight cups of ingredients, so eight generous
    helpings worth. So the one cup and a bit of sauce would be split
    eight ways, roughly two tablespoons per serving.

    A proper hard sauce does not have corn starch and a lot of water
    in it or get boiled.

    So saith cooking guru Weller.

    No. Saith every English chef and cookbook writer for the past two
    hundred years.

    It's an ancient dish, probably made shortly after the invention
    of distilled spirits but it certainly dates back to at least 1714
    and King George the First's Christmas dinner menu which was much
    written about at the time.

    The ingredients are quite codified by now. As a matter of fact when
    Great Britain was in the EU their food regulations did codify it
    formally. Among other things the final product must contain at
    least 20% butterfat to qualify.

    Hard sauce is actually a flavoured sweetened butter.

    There are plenty of other sweet dessert sauces that are made with water
    and thickened with starch or flour but they are a different thing
    altogether. Hard sauce by definition is hard, not syrupy, at room
    temperature. It's right there in the name.

    I have collected 23 hard sauce recipes over the decades from a
    number of sources and none of them have any starch in them, or
    more than a teaspoon or two of water, if any, and none of them
    involve heating or cooking.

    Your sweet starchy syrup may be tasty but it is not hard sauce.


    Cheers

    Jim


    ... Sweet cornbread is called cake.

    ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
    --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
    * Origin: Fidonet Since 1991 www.doccyber.org bbs.docsplace.org (1:135/392)
  • From Dave Drum@1:3634/12 to JIM WELLER on Monday, October 03, 2022 05:36:00
    JIM WELLER wrote to DAVE DRUM <=-

    There are plenty of other sweet dessert sauces that are made with water and thickened with starch or flour but they are a different thing altogether. Hard sauce by definition is hard, not syrupy, at room temperature. It's right there in the name.

    I have collected 23 hard sauce recipes over the decades from a
    number of sources and none of them have any starch in them, or
    more than a teaspoon or two of water, if any, and none of them
    involve heating or cooking.

    It's what my grandmother called "hard sauce". When I asked (at around
    seven or eight years old) she told me it was called hard sauce because
    of the hard liquor used in it. Her sauce was not hard when cold - just
    somewhat thicker than when warmed.

    As the twig is bent .........

    ... Sweet cornbread is called cake.

    HUH?!?!?!?

    MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.06

    Title: Old School Johnny Cake
    Categories: Five, Breads
    Yield: 6 Servings

    1 ts Salt
    1/2 c White corn meal
    1 c Scalded milk

    Mix the salt and cornmeal. Stir in gradually the scalded
    milk. Spread in a buttered 8" X 8" shallow pan. Dot with
    bits of butter.

    Bake at 350ºF/175ºC until crisp on top.

    FROM: The Fanny Farmer Cookbook. 1942 edition.

    Recipe from: http://www.recipelink.com

    Uncle Dirty Dave's Archives

    MMMMM

    ... "Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form" - Karl
    arx
    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: SouthEast Star Mail HUB - SESTAR (1:3634/12)
  • From JIM WELLER@1:135/392 to DAVE DRUM on Monday, October 03, 2022 22:54:00

    Quoting Dave Drum to Jim Weller <=-

    it was called hard sauce because of the hard liquor used in it.

    Well, uh, okay.

    Her sauce was not hard when cold - just somewhat thicker than
    when warmed.

    My mom made a sauce much like that too, but with flour, for
    Christmas time plum puddings. She called it simply "pudding sauce".

    The real thing, like the one in your second recipe, can be molded
    and shaped for fancy presentations.

    MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.06

    Title: John Nott's Mother's Plum Pudding
    Categories: Pudding, Holiday, Heirloom, Jw, Tnt
    Yield: 1 Pudding

    1 lb Raisins; stoned
    1 lb Currants; cleaned
    1 lb Brown sugar
    1 lb Suet; chopped fine
    1 lb Bread crumbs; fine
    1 lb [?] mixed citron, lemon and
    -orange peel; cut fine [how
    -much?]
    1 Nutmeg
    12 Eggs
    2 Or 3 large handfuls of flour
    1/2 Teacup of good liquor
    Sauce:
    1 c Brown sugar
    1 c Butter
    Yolk of one egg
    1 Wineglass of good liquor

    Break in 12 eggs and mix all well, stirring a good while and adding 2
    or 3 large handfuls of flour and a half a teacup of good liquor.
    Scald your cloth and flour it well. Tie the pudding pretty tight. It
    does not swell much. Boil six hours.

    Sauce: beat the butter and sugar to a cream and stir in the yolk. Put
    it on top of the stove to simmer but do not let it boil. Pour in a
    wine glass of good liquor and serve hot.

    John Nott's mother is my maternal grandfather's first wife. This
    recipe was given to my mother by her half-brother John around 1946
    and recorded in her personal recipe book word for word.

    Jim Weller

    MMMMM

    Cheers

    Jim

    ... I said "big" instead of "grande" at Starbucks once ...
    ... They dragged me out behind the store's dumpster and beat me up.

    ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
    --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
    * Origin: Fidonet Since 1991 www.doccyber.org bbs.docsplace.org (1:135/392)