Egg Sauce
Whites two eggs, 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 cup heavy cream, 1 teaspoon vanilla, Yolks two eggs.
Beat whites of eggs until stiff and dry, and add gradually, while beating constantly, sugar; then add yolks of eggs, beaten until thick and lemon-colored, and vanilla. Cut and fold in cream beaten until stiff.
This is a cold uncooked dessert sauce — whipped whites, sugar, raw yolks and whipped cream, folded together and served as-is. Nothing in it ever reaches a temperature that would make raw egg safe, which is why it cannot be recommended today.
- Raw yolks are the problemBoth whites and yolks go in uncooked and nothing in the method heats them, so the sauce is served cold. Salmonella in shell eggs is an interior risk, not just a shell risk, so beating and chilling do nothing to it. A cooked custard or a modern sauce recipe should be used instead.
- No sugar-cooking step to helpSome period egg sauces at least beat the whites over hot water or poured in boiling syrup, which gives partial pasteurisation. This one does not — the sugar is added dry to cold whites, so there is no heat step anywhere in the method.
- "Powdered sugar" in this periodFor reference: in early twentieth-century American books powdered sugar usually means a finely ground granulated sugar, nearer today's superfine or caster than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold under that name now.
- "Cut and fold"An older phrase for a single motion — the spoon or spatula cuts down through the middle of the mass and folds it over — meant to preserve the air beaten into the whites and cream.
- Yield, for contextTwo whites, a cup of sugar and a cup of cream whipped up would have made roughly a quart of foamy sauce, enough to dress a family-sized steamed or cottage pudding.
Choice Recipes was one of the recipe booklets issued by Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, the long-established American chocolate firm, and distributed to promote its cocoa and chocolate. Sauces like this one appear in the booklets alongside the chocolate recipes. The sauce itself belongs to a large family of nineteenth-century sweet pudding sauces built on beaten egg and sugar o hfoam or "schaum" sauces, and to the sabayon tradition. Cooked versions of the same idea, beaten over hot water and thickened like a custard, were also common in the period; the uncooked shortcut was simply faster and was not then understood to carry the risk it does.