Lemon Sauce
Half a cup of butter, two and one-half cups of sugar, one tablespoonful of corn starch heaped, wet in a little cold milk, juice of two lemons and the grated rind of half of one lemon, one pint of boiling water; cream the sugar and butter nicely, pour the cornstarch into the boiling water and stir over the fire until it has thickened. Put all together in a bowl and beat for several minutes, return to the farina kettle, heat well and serve.
A pudding sauce of the pour-over kind, thickened with cornstarch and enriched with creamed butter and sugar. It is very sweet by current standards, and the method has one step worth respecting.
- Farina kettleAn older name for a double boiler — an inner pot set over simmering water in an outer one. Use any heatproof bowl or saucepan over a pan of water; the point is that the sauce reheats without scorching or breaking.
- Acid and cornstarchLemon juice weakens cornstarch's thickening power if it boils with it. The recipe is right to cook the starch in plain water first and add the juice only when everything is beaten together off direct heat. Do not let the finished sauce come to a boil.
- The slurryA heaped tablespoon of cornstarch wet in a little cold milk, then poured into a pint (2 cups) of boiling water. Stir constantly as it goes in or it will lump; two minutes at a simmer cooks out the raw starch taste.
- SweetnessTwo and a half cups of sugar to a pint of water is an old-fashioned proportion, presumably pitched at a plain steamed, boiled or cottage pudding rather than a rich dessert. Against a modern cake or a bought sponge it will taste cloying; a cup and a half is closer to current taste, though that departs from the text.
- LemonsTwo lemons means roughly 4-5 tablespoons of juice; taste and stop there rather than juicing two large modern fruit blind.
- RindGrate only the yellow zest of the half lemon. The white pith underneath is bitter and will show in a sauce this sweet.
- YieldAbout four cups — enough for ten or more servings spooned over pudding. It thickens as it cools and can be loosened with a spoonful of hot water when reheated in the double boiler.
Sweet pudding sauces occupy a great deal of space in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth century, because the puddings themselves were deliberately plain: steamed batter puddings, boiled suet puddings, cottage puddings, bread puddings made from leftovers. The sauce carried the flavor and the sugar, and lemon, hard, and foamy sauces appear in nearly every dessert chapter of the period. Cornstarch made this style possible on a household budget — commercially milled corn starch became widely available in the United States from the middle of the century and gave cooks a cheap thickener that set clear rather than cloudy, unlike flour, and needed no eggs. The "farina kettle" named at the end is a relic of the same era's kitchen equipment: a double vessel sold chiefly for cooking farina and other breakfast cereals without scorching, and pressed into service here for anything that could not take direct heat.