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Syrup and Wine Sauce for Rich Sweet Puddings
Take a quarter of a pint of good melted butter. Stir into this one-eighth of a pint of dissolved red currant jelly and one-eighth of a pint of port. Stir the sauce over the fire till it is on the point of boiling, and pour it upon and around the pudding.
A three-ingredient sauce that depends almost entirely on knowing what Victorian cooks meant by "melted butter" — which is not melted butter.
- "Melted butter" is a flour-thickened sauceIn English cookery books of this period, melted butter means the standard white butter sauce: roughly 2 oz butter and 1 oz flour cooked together, let down with about half a pint of water or milk and simmered smooth. Actual melted butter will not carry the jelly and port; it will simply separate into a greasy pool.
- The measuresThese are imperial pints of 20 fl oz. A quarter pint of the butter sauce is 5 fl oz, a scant 2/3 US cup; one-eighth of a pint is 2 1/2 fl oz, or 5 tablespoons. The finished sauce comes to about 10 fl oz.
- Dissolved jellyWarm the redcurrant jelly gently in a small pan with a spoonful of water until it is liquid and smooth, then measure it. Stirring cold set jelly straight into the sauce leaves lumps that never quite go.
- The hinge: do not let it boilThe instruction to bring it only to the point of boiling is the whole technique. A flour-and-butter sauce carrying this much wine and sugar will thin and dull in colour if boiled, and the butter may oil out; take it off as the first tremor appears at the edge.
- PortA young, sweet, deeply coloured ruby port suits this best; the recipe specifies nothing beyond "port". The alcohol will not fully cook off in the minute or two of heating.
- Yield and servingAbout 10 fl oz. Send it to the table hot, since it thickens noticeably as it cools.
- What it is for"Rich sweet puddings" means the boiled and steamed puddings of the period - plum pudding, castle puddings, a cabinet pudding. Against a light sponge it is overwhelming.
"Melted butter" was the workhorse sauce of English kitchens for well over a century - a plain flour-and-butter liaison that could be turned savoury with anchovy or parsley, or sweet with wine, jelly and sugar. The quip that the English possessed only one sauce is an often-repeated jibe of uncertain origin rather than documented kitchen opinion. Redcurrant jelly and port together read as a signal of richness, and the same pairing turns up alongside venison and mutton as well as in sweet sauces.