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Ratafia Sauce, for Sweet Puddings
Moisten a dessert-spoonful of arrowroot with a spoonful of cold water, and rub it till smooth. Pour over it--stirring all the time--a quarter of a pint of boiling water. Add a table-spoonful of ratafia liqueur and sugar to taste. Boil a minute or two, and serve. Time, ten minutes. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A thin, clear pouring sauce thickened with arrowroot rather than flour or egg — quick, but it depends entirely on not overcooking the starch.
- Do not boil it longArrowroot thickens almost instantly and then breaks down: held at a boil it thins again and turns slightly stringy. "Boil a minute or two" is the outer limit; the moment it clears and coats the spoon, take it off the heat.
- A quarter of a pintIn an English book of this period that is 5 fl oz, a generous half cup. A dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons, midway between the teaspoon and the tablespoon of the same era.
- The slurry mattersRubbing the arrowroot smooth with cold water first is the whole technique. Adding boiling water to dry starch gives lumps that will not disperse, and unlike flour sauces there is no long cooking to smooth them out.
- Ratafia liqueurA sweetened almond- or fruit-kernel cordial, close to modern amaretto or crème de noyau. Any almond-flavoured liqueur stands in; add it off the heat if you want the aroma to survive, since it is volatile.
- Sugar to tasteThe liqueur is already sweet, so start with a teaspoon or two. This is a sauce for plain steamed or baked puddings, and it should read as flavouring rather than syrup.
- Serve at onceArrowroot sauces slacken and go slightly watery as they stand, and they do not reheat well. Make it while the pudding is turning out.
- YieldThe stated six to eight servings assumes a couple of spoonfuls each poured over a pudding. Double it if you want a pool on the plate.
Ratafia is an old European term for a sweetened infusion of fruit kernels, almonds or fruit in spirit; the name is generally traced to the practice of drinking such a cordial to ratify a bargain, though that etymology is traditional rather than settled. By the nineteenth century "ratafia" in a British kitchen meant two related things: the liqueur, and the small hard almond macaroons sold as ratafia biscuits, both used to give the bitter-almond note that Victorian cooks loved in creams, trifles and pudding sauces. Arrowroot gave a clear, glossy sauce made at modest cost and, being thought delicate on the stomach, carried a faint air of the invalid cookery that fills so many pages of these books.