hard sauce

A creamy sauce of butter and sugar with rum, brandy, or vanilla flavoring, served chilled with puddings, gingerbread, or fruitcakes.

Butter and sugar, flavoured with brandy or rum, served with rich puddings.

The traditional accompaniment for plum pudding, hard sauce is made by beating butter, sugar and flavoring together until smooth and creamy. The sugar can be confectioners', granulated or brown. The flavoring is generally brandy, rum or whiskey, though vanilla or other extracts may also be used. This mixture is refrigerated until "hard" (the texture of butter). It's often spooned into a decorative mold before chilling and unmolded before serving. Hard sauce is known in England as brandy butter.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: butter and sugar creamed together with brandy or other flavoring and served with rich puddings

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Christmas dessert including hard sauce (lower centre) for pudding (and on tarts at upper right)

Hard sauce is a cold dessert sauce made by creaming or beating butter and sugar with rum, brandy, whiskey, vanilla or other flavoring. It is typically served with plum pudding, bread pudding, Indian pudding, hasty pudding, and other heavy puddings as well as with fruitcakes and gingerbread. An example of such a sauce is brandy butter.

Though it is called a sauce, it is neither a liquid nor smooth. It could be more accurately classified as a spread and has the consistency of butter. It is easy to make and keeps for months under refrigeration. It can be pressed into a decorative mold before chilling.

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