hard sauce

"Hard sauce.  A dessert topping made with butter, confectioners' sugar, eggs, and vanilla, dating in print to 1880." John F. Mariani, Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink. rev. ed. New York: Lebhar-Friedman, 1999. 150.

"Culinary evidence confirms cooks have been pairing warm puddings with sweet sauces from Medieval times forward. Then, as now, recipes varied. The general purpose, in some cases, was to make the pudding more palatable and pleasing to the eye. Traditional recipes for bread and rice puddings include these ingredients. These dishes were often served to young, invalids, and aged because they were considered easy to digest and chew. Repurposing restorative properties for holiday steamed puddings makes perfect senese (sic). The sometime addition of alcoholic ingredients (sack, brandy, rum, Madeira) also makes sense. In those days, small amounts of alcohol were considered medicinal. Hard Sauce, as we know it today, descends from these traditions. Plum Pudding is traditionally served with Hard Sauce. ...
[NOTE: This explains why early cookbooks don't have recipes with this title. A careful examination of earlier recipes traces the evolution of the practice as well as the names. In the 19th century 'Pudding Sauce' was the common name for what we know today as 'Hard Sauce.']" (sic).

IMAGE CREDIT:

Colin Henein. “Christmas desserts including plum pudding and hard sauce.” 25 December 2004. Attribution: Colin Henein, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.