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Pudding Sauce, Careme's
Beat the yolks of two eggs, to which add half a pint of Madeira and four ounces of pounded sugar. Set this combination upon embers or a slow fire, and mill it with a chocolate mill. It will thicken and become smooth, and is a superior pudding sauce. Serve in a saucetureen, and the moulded pudding without other accompaniment. This sauce answers well for all kinds of plum or other rich puddings.
A wine sabayon under another name, and it stands or falls on heat control. Everything else in it is straightforward.
- The hinge: never let it boilTwo yolks in that much wine set at around 160-170F and scramble not far above it. Work over a bain-marie of barely trembling water, off the heat entirely if the pan starts to feel hot to the back of your hand, and pull it as soon as it coats the whisk.
- "Embers or a slow fire"The point of embers was diffuse, falling heat. A double boiler over water held just below a simmer is the equivalent; a heavy pan on the lowest gas setting will also do if you keep it moving.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fluid ounces, so about 1 1/4 US cups. Cassell's is a British book and imperial measures should be assumed throughout.
- Four ounces of pounded sugarThat is by weight, roughly 115 g or a scant 2/3 cup of granulated. "Pounded" simply means broken down from a loaf; ordinary caster or granulated sugar is what is wanted, and it dissolves faster than the coarse stuff would have.
- A chocolate millThe wooden molinillo, spun between the palms to froth chocolate. A balloon whisk does the same job; an electric hand mixer on medium does it faster and gives a lighter foam.
- The MadeiraUse a drinkable medium Madeira -- Bual or Verdelho -- rather than supermarket "cooking Madeira," which is often salted. Sercial will give a drier, sharper sauce; sweet Malmsey with the full four ounces of sugar becomes cloying.
- Serve at onceSabayon holds its volume for perhaps ten minutes before it slackens and weeps. Warm the sauce tureen, make the sauce while the pudding is being turned out, and carry both to the table together.
- YieldEnough for six to eight helpings of a rich steamed pudding, where a spoonful or two is all anyone wants.
Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833) was among the most quoted cooks of the nineteenth century, and Victorian compilers such as Cassell's attached his name to sauces and garnishes with varying degrees of authority -- a Carême attribution in an English household dictionary often signals "in the French grand manner" as much as it signals a traceable original. The technique itself is older than Carême and generally held to be Italian in origin: yolks, sugar and fortified wine whisked over gentle heat, known as zabaglione in Italy and sabayon in France. The use of Madeira rather than Marsala here may simply reflect what an English cook had to hand. Madeira had been a fixture of British cellars since the eighteenth century, when the trade routes and the practice of shipping it through the tropics gave it a reputation for near-indestructibility once opened -- the sort of bottle a Victorian cook could keep at the back of the store cupboard for sauces and jellies. Serving it with plum pudding puts a hot foam where a hard sauce or brandy butter would otherwise sit, which may be why the recipe specifies the moulded pudding "without other accompaniment."