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Raspberry Sauce
Raspberry sauce for sweet puddings of various kinds may be made in three or four ways, as follows. Put equal quantities of picked raspberries and red currants into a saucepan with a small portion of sugar, and as much water as will cover the bottom of the pan. Let the fruit simmer gently till it breaks, then rub through a sieve. Boil the juice, and serve. Or, beat two eggs in a bowl; mix smoothly with them a tea-spoonful of flour, half a pint of raspberry-juice, and two table-spoonfuls of sugar. Turn the mixture into a saucepan, and whisk it over the fire until it begins to thicken. Serve immediately. Or, mix half a pint of raspberry-juice with half a pint of cream. Whip the mixture till it is light and frothy, and serve at once. Or, put half a pint of raspberries into an earthen jar with three table-spoonfuls of cold water. Set the jar in a pan of boiling water, and keep it boiling till the juice flows freely. Strain it, and mix it smoothly with a table-spoonful of arrow-root which has been made into a paste with a little cold water. Add a glassful of light wine and a little sugar, and stir the mixture over the fire till it is on the point of boiling. Serve immediately. When fresh fruit cannot be obtained for these sauces, raspberry jam boiled and strained may be used instead.
Four sauces from one page: a plain fruit purée, an egg-thickened sabayon-style sauce, a whipped cream fool, and an arrowroot-bound wine sauce. They are not interchangeable in body, and two of them will fail if you let them boil.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint here is 10 imperial fluid ounces, about 1¼ US cups (roughly 284 ml). A glassful of wine is loose; a wine glass of the period is usually reckoned at something like 2 to 3 fl oz.
- The egg version is a custardTwo eggs, a teaspoon of flour and half a pint of juice will thicken somewhere around 160 to 175F. Whisk constantly over low heat or a water bath; the flour gives some protection, but if it is allowed to simmer hard the eggs can still scramble.
- An earthen jar in boiling waterThis is a bain-marie for extracting juice without scorching. A heatproof bowl or a wide-mouth canning jar set in a pan of simmering water does the same; go by the original's cue and keep it going until the juice runs freely.
- The whipped versionWhip cold heavy cream (36% fat or above) to soft peaks first, then fold in the juice. Whipping juice and cream together from the start, as written, gives a slack froth that weeps within minutes; even folded, serve it straight away.
- Arrowroot behaviourArrowroot sets on heating and thins again if held at a boil, which is why the original says only "on the point of boiling." Take it off the heat as it clears and thickens. Cornstarch is not a direct swap; it needs a full boil and clouds the colour.
- "Light wine"A dry-to-off-dry white, or a light red such as a Beaujolais if you want the colour deepened. Nothing fortified; sherry or Madeira will bury the raspberry.
- Red currantsHard to find fresh in North America. They contribute pectin and sharpness as much as flavour, so a squeeze of lemon plus a few tablespoons of cranberry or sour cherry will get you somewhere near the effect if you cannot get them.
- YieldVaries by version: the egg and arrowroot sauces come to roughly a pint or a little under, while the cream version starts from a full pint of liquid before whipping; the plain purée gives no quantities at all. Only the plain fruit purée keeps; it will hold three or four days refrigerated.
Sauces of this kind belong to the long English tradition of serving a sharp fruit purée against a plain boiled or steamed pudding — the sweet counterpart to the redcurrant jelly set beside mutton. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in late-Victorian London, characteristically gives not one method but the whole family of methods in a single paragraph, letting the cook choose according to what is in the larder: fruit and sugar alone, fruit bound with egg, fruit lightened with cream, or fruit set with arrowroot and wine. Arrowroot, imported chiefly from St Vincent and Bermuda, was prized in nineteenth-century kitchens precisely because it thickened clear rather than cloudy, keeping the colour of a red fruit sauce bright where flour would dull it; it was also considered a delicate food for invalids, which is part of why it turns up so often in sweet sauces of the period. The closing note about jam is the practical heart of the entry — raspberries have a season of a few weeks, and the preserve cupboard carried the sauce through the rest of the year.