Mixture
One pint cream, one pint milk, one-half cup butter, one heaping tablespoon flour; put milk, butter and cream on the fire in a farina kettle, reserving one-half cup of the milk to blend the flour in; when they commence to boil, stir in the flour and milk, boil all together to about the consistency of a boiled custard, then put between and over the shortcake.
A pouring cream sauce for shortcake, thickened only slightly with flour. The whole point is the texture: it should coat a spoon like a thin boiled custard, not set up like a white sauce.
- Farina kettleThis is a double boiler — the name comes from cooking farina (wheat cereal) over water without scorching. Use a heatproof bowl or an inset pan over simmering water; a heavy saucepan over low heat works if you stir constantly.
- The flour is deliberately scantOne heaping tablespoon to a full quart of liquid gives a sauce barely thicker than heavy cream. If you want it to nap the cake rather than soak it, use two tablespoons; much past three and it approaches a bechamel.
- Blending the flourWhisk the flour into the reserved half cup of cold milk until perfectly smooth before it goes anywhere near the hot pan. Adding dry flour to hot cream guarantees lumps that no amount of stirring will fix.
- Cook out the flourOnce it thickens, hold it at a bare simmer for another two or three minutes. Under-cooked flour tastes raw and pasty, which is far more obvious in a sweet sauce than in a gravy.
- Keeping it from breakingHalf a cup of butter in a quart of dairy is generous, and over direct heat it will separate out as an oily film. The double boiler is what prevents this; if it does break, whisk in a splash of cold milk off the heat.
- No sugar, no flavouringAs written this is unsweetened. The period assumption is that the sugar comes from the sweetened fruit layered with the shortcake. If you are serving it with plain biscuit, add three or four tablespoons of sugar and a little vanilla with the flour.
- YieldAbout a quart of sauce. It thickens noticeably as it cools; serve warm, and thin with milk if it stiffens.
American shortcake of the nineteenth century was a sweetened biscuit dough, split and layered with crushed fruit, and the question of what to put over it divided cooks. Whipped cream, which needs a cold larder and a strong arm, was one answer; a cooked cream sauce like this one was another, and a flour-bound sauce holds together and stretches a pint of cream to feed a table. The instruction to put it "between and over" the shortcake shows the dish was built up in layers. The farina kettle called for here turns up throughout books of this period, sold for milk-based invalid cookery and breakfast cereals, wherever scorching is the main risk.