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Lemon Sauce for Puddings
Put the rind and strained juice of a large lemon into a bowl. Pour over them a wine-glassful of sherry or raisin wine, and wine-glassful of water. Let them infuse some time. Mix an ounce of fresh butter and an ounce of flour over the fire. When it is slightly browned gradually pour in the wine and water, etc.; add two table-spoonfuls of sugar, and boil gently until the mixture is quite smooth. Draw the saucepan from the fire, let the contents cool a minute, then add the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Stir the mixture until it thickens, but it must not be allowed to boil after the eggs are added, or it will curdle. Time, four or five minutes to boil the sauce. Probable cost, 3d., exclusive of the sherry. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A lemon-and-wine sauce thickened first with a roux and then enriched with yolks — essentially a sweet velouté. The whole thing stands or falls on the last step.
- Never boil after the yolksOnce the yolks go in the sauce must be kept below a simmer; a single bubble will scramble them into threads. Take the pan off direct heat, or finish it over a pan of barely simmering water, and stir until it coats the back of a spoon.
- Wine-glassfulIn Victorian cookery books this is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz (a scant quarter cup), so the sherry and water together come to roughly 1/2 cup, plus the strained juice of the lemon. That is a small, concentrated sauce, which is why two egg yolks are enough to thicken it.
- The rindThe recipe does not say whether to pare or grate it. Pared in strips with no white pith it will infuse and can then be lifted out, or the sauce strained, before the yolks are added.
- Raisin wineA homemade country wine, sweet, and no longer commercially available. The recipe offers sherry as the first choice and raisin wine as the alternative; a medium or cream sherry suits a pudding sauce, and Madeira or a sweet white will also serve.
- Browning the roux"Slightly browned" means blond, a minute or two of cooking, no more. A dark roux would muddy both the colour and the lemon flavour, and browned flour thickens less.
- SugarTwo tablespoons goes into only about half a cup of liquid, so the sauce is decidedly sweet; taste once it is smooth and adjust before the yolks go in, since sherries vary widely in sweetness.
- Yield and servingSufficient for four or five persons, as the original says -- enough to spoon over a steamed or baked pudding. Serve at once; it thickens further as it cools and will not reheat over direct heat.
- Probable cost3d., and the recipe is explicit that this excludes the sherry, so the wine was the expensive part of the dish.
Sweet wine sauces of this kind were standard accompaniments to the boiled and steamed puddings that anchored the Victorian dinner, where a plain suet or batter pudding was expected to arrive with something poured over it. The sauce uses two thickenings at once: the flour-and-butter roux of the French kitchen and the older English liaison of egg yolks, one laid over the other. Raisin wine was a homemade product of the still-room, while sherry had to be bought -- and the recipe quotes its cost separately.