Jelly Sauce
Melt one ounce of sugar and two table-spoons grape jelly over the fire in a half pint of boiling water, and stir into it half a tea-spoon corn starch dissolved in a half cup cold water, let come to a boil, and it will be ready for use. Any other fruit jelly may be used instead of grape.
A thin, glossy pudding sauce of the sort that once accompanied steamed and boiled puddings. It takes about five minutes and asks for almost nothing.
- The measurements in modern termsA half pint of boiling water is one cup; one ounce of sugar is about two tablespoons. With the half cup of cold water used for the slurry you end up with roughly a cup and a half of finished sauce, enough for six modest servings.
- Expect a syrup, not a gravyHalf a teaspoon of cornstarch to a cup and a half of liquid is very light thickening indeed. The result should coat a spoon thinly and pour freely. If you want it to cling, raise the cornstarch to a scant teaspoon and no more, or it turns pasty.
- Dissolve the starch cold, alwaysThe half cup of cold water is not padding; cornstarch tipped straight into hot liquid seizes into lumps. Whisk it smooth in the cold water first, then stream it in.
- Bring it to a boil and mean itCornstarch does not reach full thickening power until the mixture actually bubbles, and a brief boil also cooks off the raw starch taste. Once it has boiled, take it off; prolonged boiling breaks the gel down again and the sauce thins.
- Jelly, not jamThe recipe wants clear fruit jelly, which melts to a smooth glaze. Jam or preserves will work but leave seeds and pulp, and their higher fruit content makes the sauce cloudy and more tart. Sweetness varies a great deal from jelly to jelly, so taste before adding the full sugar.
- Adjust for acidityCurrant, quince or crabapple jelly gives a sharper sauce than grape and may want the sugar left as written; a very sweet commercial grape jelly may need none at all. A squeeze of lemon at the end brightens any of them.
- ServingIntended for cottage pudding, steamed batter puddings, bread pudding or plain cake. Serve warm; it sets slightly as it cools and can be loosened over low heat with a spoonful of water.
Sweet cornstarch sauces appear frequently in American household cookbooks from the 1870s onward, and cornstarch was cheap and shelf-stable. Commercial corn starch had been manufactured in the United States since the middle of the century, and it let a cook thicken a sauce without eggs, cream or butter, all of which cost money and spoiled. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping appeared in 1877, a revised and enlarged form of the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book compiled in Marysville, Ohio, in 1876; it is a subscription-style compilation of contributions from many households, which is why its sauce chapter reads as a set of variations on a single frugal formula: hot water, sugar, a thickener, and whatever flavoring is at hand. Grape jelly is named first here, and the closing line offers any other fruit jelly in its place.