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Ginger Sauce
Grate an inch and a half of whole ginger, and mix it with four table-spoonfuls of finely-sifted loaf sugar. Put these into a saucepan, with a breakfast-cupful of water and an inch of lemonrind. Simmer gently for ten minutes, then add the juice of a lemon and a glass of white wine or brandy. Strain before serving. Probable cost, 3d., exclusive of the wine. Sufficient for one pint of sauce.
A thin, unthickened sweet sauce of the sort Victorian kitchens poured over steamed and boiled puddings. Nothing here is difficult; the measures are the only obstacle.
- Breakfast-cupfulRoughly 10 fl oz (about 1¼ cups) — the breakfast cup was the large one, closer to half a pint than to a teacup. A "glass" of wine in recipes of this period is generally taken as a wineglassful, about 2 fl oz.
- Loaf sugarSugar broken from a refined cone, then crushed and sifted. Granulated or caster sugar is the direct replacement; four tablespoons is about 50 g.
- Whole ginger"Whole" distinguishes the unground root from powdered ginger, and it may well mean the dried root sold in pieces, which is what a Victorian grocer commonly supplied. An inch and a half of dried root grates to something far more pungent than the same length of fresh — this is a case where the original is genuinely ambiguous. Fresh root works well; start with less and taste.
- Add the wine off the heatThe lemon juice and wine or brandy go in after the ten minutes' simmering, and should not be boiled afterwards. Boiling drives off the spirit and the fresh lemon sharpness that give the sauce its point.
- Lemon rindPare the inch of rind thinly with a knife or peeler, taking no white pith, which turns bitter over a ten-minute simmer.
- Strain properlyGrated ginger leaves fibres. A fine sieve lined with muslin gives a clear sauce; a coarse strainer will not.
- YieldThe stated pint is optimistic — the liquid as written comes to about three-quarters of a pint after simmering. Enough for six to eight servings poured over pudding; top up with water if you want the full pint.
Ginger sauce belongs to the large Victorian family of pudding sauces — sweet, thin, poured hot from a boat over suet, sponge or batter puddings, and built on sugar, water, citrus and a measure of wine or spirit rather than on butter or cream. The costing of threepence, wine excluded, is a reminder of how the book was used: dried ginger, lemon and sugar were cheap grocer's staples by the 1870s, while a glass of white wine or brandy was the expensive optional flourish, and the reader was told plainly which part of the bill was discretionary.