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Marmalade, Orange, Sauce
Take two large table-spoonfuls of orange marmalade, put it into a saucepan with a wine-glassful of sherry, another of water, and six lumps of white sugar. Boil until the sugar is dissolved, and thicken with arrowroot. Sufficient for a large pudding. Time to make, about five minutes. Probable cost, 10d.
A five-minute pudding sauce built on jarred marmalade, sherry and a little starch. The only technical step is the arrowroot, and it is the one place the sauce can be spoiled.
- Arrowroot, slaked and barely simmeredMix about a teaspoon of arrowroot with a tablespoon of cold water before it goes anywhere near the pan, then stir it in off the boil. Arrowroot thickens well below boiling point and thins again if held at a hard boil, so bring it back just to a shiver and take it off.
- A wine-glassfulIn Victorian cookery books this is roughly 2 fl oz, a quarter of a cup. So 1/4 cup sherry and 1/4 cup water.
- Lumps of sugarVictorian loaf-sugar lumps varied in size, but roughly a teaspoon each, so six lumps is in the region of 2 tablespoons. Marmalade is already heavily sweetened; taste before adding the full amount, particularly with a modern thick-cut jar.
- Which sherryAn oloroso or amontillado suits orange better than a fino. Cream sherry works but push the added sugar down to two or three lumps.
- Strain or don'tLeft as is, the sauce carries strips of peel. For a clear glossy sauce, press it through a sieve after the sugar dissolves and thicken the strained liquid.
- YieldAbout 3/4 cup, the 'large pudding' quantity of the original -- enough to serve alongside a steamed or baked sponge. Serve hot; it thickens as it cools and may need rewarming with a spoonful of water.
- Probable cost, 10dTenpence in late-Victorian money, a real sum for a sauce, with the sherry likely the largest part of it.
Cassell's includes this among the sweet sauces meant for boiled and baked puddings, the category that kept a Victorian dinner's final course from arriving dry. Marmalade was one of the few preserves a household could reliably keep year-round, and using it as the base of a sauce is thrift dressed up: a spoonful of jam, a glass of wine and a starch does the work of a fruit compote made from scratch. Orange marmalade is often traced to Scottish commercial production in the eighteenth century, and by the time this dictionary was circulating it was widely available shop-bought. Arrowroot, imported from the West Indies, was a fashionable thickener of the period because it sets clear where flour sets cloudy -- a distinction that mattered when a sauce was poured at the table.