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Pudding Sauce (One cupful sugar butter size)
One cupful sugar, butter size of an egg, a little salt. Put beaten eggs, sugar and butter in a bowl, and make nearly one pint of starch, with two tablespoonfuls of corn starch; stir this while hot in the sugar butter and egg, then add one wine glass of wine or half a wine glass of brandy.
A thin pouring sauce for boiled or steamed puddings, thickened with cornstarch rather than reduced by long cooking. The whole thing hinges on the temperature at which the hot starch meets the eggs.
- The hinge: temper, then holdPour the boiling starch into the egg-sugar-butter mixture in a slow stream while whisking hard, or the eggs will scramble into threads. If the combined sauce does not reach about 160F, set the bowl over simmering water and stir until it does, then take it off before it approaches a boil, which would thin the starch and curdle the egg.
- Butter size of an eggAbout 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Nineteenth-century books used the egg as a volume gauge constantly, though the amount intended varied from roughly 1 to 2 ounces.
- Eggs, count unspecifiedThe original never says how many. For a pint of starch base, two eggs gives a light sauce and three a distinctly custardy one; more than that and it wants to be a proper stirred custard.
- "Nearly one pint of starch"This means the cooked liquid, not dry starch: whisk the 2 tablespoons cornstarch smooth in a little cold water, add to roughly 2 cups of boiling water or milk, and cook a minute or two until it is clear and thickened. Water gives the traditional translucent wine sauce; milk gives something closer to a custard sauce.
- Wine glassAround 2 fluid ounces in period usage, so a quarter cup of sherry, Madeira or sweet white wine, or 1 ounce of brandy. Add it off the heat so the aroma survives.
- SweetnessA cupful of sugar in two cups of liquid is very sweet by current taste, which suited the plain suet and bread puddings it was made for. Two-thirds of a cup is closer to modern expectations.
- Yield and servingAround three cups, depending on how many eggs are used. Serve warm; it thickens as it cools and can be loosened with a spoonful of hot water.
Pudding sauce was a common feature of American cookbooks of the later nineteenth century, when boiled, steamed and baked puddings closed many family dinners. Cooks kept two basic types: a hard sauce of creamed butter and sugar that melted on contact, and a poured sauce like this one, thickened with flour or cornstarch and flavored with wine, brandy or lemon. Cornstarch was manufactured on a commercial scale in the United States from the mid-century onward, though flour and arrowroot continued in use for sauces of this kind. The wine glass as a measure also points to this period, before graduated measuring cups were general; the vagueness about the eggs may suggest the recipe was set down as a reminder for someone who already knew how it should look.