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Fruit Sauce for Puddings
Boil in a quarter of a pint of water double that quantity of fruit (raspberries, strawberries, or currants do well for this sauce), and four ounces of good sugar. Take off the scum as it rises, and when the juice looks rich, and is thickish, strain, and serve it over the pudding. This sauce may be made from preserved fruits, when fruit is out of season.
A plain boiled fruit syrup, the sort of thing meant to be poured hot over a steamed or baked pudding. The whole method is in the phrase "when the juice looks rich, and is thickish" — you are reducing, not making jam.
- The measurementsA quarter of a pint in this British book is 5 fl oz, about two-thirds of a US cup. "Double that quantity of fruit" reads as half a pint by volume; the recipe gives no weight, and berries measured by volume weigh less than the same volume of water, so expect roughly 5 to 8 oz of fruit. Four ounces of sugar is about half a cup.
- Sugar is adjustableFour ounces to half a pint of fruit is a Victorian ratio and will read as very sweet against modern palates, especially with strawberries. Redcurrants and blackcurrants need it; ripe raspberries and strawberries can take half.
- How long to boilNo time is given because the cue is visual. Five to eight minutes at a steady boil is usually enough for the juice to look glossy and coat a spoon lightly. It thickens noticeably as it cools, so stop while it still looks a little thin.
- SkimmingThe scum is froth carrying impurities to the surface, and taking it off as it rises is what keeps the finished sauce clear rather than cloudy. Use a spoon, not a skimmer, on a quantity this small.
- StrainingPress the fruit gently through a fine sieve rather than forcing it — hard pressing pushes pulp through and you lose the clarity you just skimmed for. Raspberry and currant seeds are the point of straining here.
- Currants set firmlyRedcurrants and blackcurrants are high in pectin and will gel in the pan if reduced too far. If the sauce stiffens on cooling, thin it with a spoonful of hot water rather than reheating hard.
- From preserved fruitIf you use jam or bottled fruit as the final line suggests, cut the sugar back or leave it out altogether depending on how sweet the preserve already is, loosen it with the water, then boil briefly and strain.
- YieldAbout three-quarters of a cup of sauce, enough for four to six servings of pudding. Serve hot; it is not intended to be a cold coulis.
Sauces of this kind belong to the era of the boiled and steamed pudding, when a suet or batter pudding turned out of its basin needed something to carry it, and the choices ran to a sweet white sauce, a hard sauce of butter and sugar, or a fruit syrup like this one. It reads as a formula rather than a dish — a ratio of water to fruit to sugar that the cook was expected to apply to whatever was ripe. The closing note about preserved fruit is the practical heart of it: in a household that bottled and jammed its own summer crop, a jar of raspberry preserve was the standing means of putting a fruit sauce on the table in February.