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MATRIMONY SAUCE (for Dumplings)
Put a bit of butter into cold water in a saucepan; dust in a little flour, stirring one way till they are completely mixed; then add some brown sugar and a table-spoonful or so of vinegar. Continue stirring till the sauce boils; pour into a basin, and serve.
A sweet-sour sauce built in the pan without a roux, thickened by flour slaked into cold water. The original gives no quantities at all, so the proportions below are a working starting point rather than a conversion.
- The hinge: start coldThe flour goes into cold water with the butter and is stirred smooth before any heat does its work. If the pan is already hot the flour is much more likely to lump. Roughly 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp flour to 1 cup cold water gives a pourable sauce, but the original specifies nothing.
- "Stirring one way"The instruction recurs in Victorian cookery books. It has no chemical basis for a flour sauce; why it was given so often is not documented, though it is usually read as shorthand for a steady, continuous motion. Stir however you like, but do not stop until it boils.
- Cook the flour outThe instruction stops at the boil. Give it two to three minutes at a gentle simmer after thickening or the sauce tastes raw and pasty.
- Brown sugarIn this period brown sugar meant an unrefined or partly refined sugar with real molasses in it. Light or dark muscovado is closer than modern soft brown sugar. Start with 2 tbsp and taste.
- VinegarMalt vinegar was the usual household vinegar in Britain in this period and is sharper and maltier than cider or wine vinegar, though the recipe does not say which to use. Note that the original adds the vinegar before the sauce boils; adding it at the end instead, off the heat, keeps the edge brighter. Adjust against the sugar until it is clearly both sweet and sour.
- Yield and servingThe quantities above make roughly a cup, enough for four boiled suet or apple dumplings. Serve hot in a warmed jug; it thickens noticeably as it cools and will need a splash of water to loosen if reheated.
The sauce is a plain sweet-sharp dressing for boiled dumplings, the sort of suet or apple pudding common in Victorian household cookery. The name appears to be a joke on the sauce being sweet and sour at once, though no source explains it. Sugar cut with vinegar or lemon turns up in other period sauces, and such mixtures gave a plain steamed pudding some acidity cheaply. Slaking flour into cold liquid rather than cooking it into butter as a roux is a domestic method that persisted in household manuals alongside the roux.