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Duchesse Sauce
Boil 2 ounces grated chocolate in 1/2 pint milk five minutes; strain on 2 yolks of eggs beaten with 1/2 gill cream and 1/2 cupful sugar; strain; return to fire, stir until thick as honey; remove, and add 1 teaspoonful extract vanilla.
A chocolate pouring custard, thin enough to flood a plate or a steamed pudding. The whole recipe hinges on the second cooking: the yolks must thicken without boiling.
- The critical stepOnce the yolks go in, hold the pan between 170 and 180F and stir constantly. Above roughly 185F the yolks scramble and the sauce turns grainy; a heatproof bowl over simmering water gives you more margin than direct heat.
- MeasuresHalf a pint of milk is 1 cup. A gill is 4 fluid ounces, or 1/2 cup, so 1/2 gill of cream is 1/4 cup. Two ounces of grated chocolate is roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup, depending on how loosely it is grated.
- The chocolateIn a book of this vintage "grated chocolate" means unsweetened block chocolate, which is why a half cupful of sugar follows. With modern semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, cut the sugar by at least half and taste.
- "Thick as honey"A useful gauge, but judge it warm: the sauce sets noticeably firmer as it cools. Pull it when it coats the back of a spoon and a finger drawn across leaves a clear track.
- Why strain twiceThe first strain removes undissolved chocolate solids and any milk skin; the second, after the yolks are stirred in, catches any yolk the hot milk has already set, along with chalazae. Both help toward a smooth, glossy sauce.
- Vanilla lastExtract is added off the heat because the alcohol carries the aroma off with it in steam. Stir it in once the pan is off the burner.
- Yield and servingRoughly 1 1/2 cups, enough for about six small servings. Serve warm over steamed or bread puddings; if made ahead, reheat gently over water and never in a boiling pan.
Nineteenth-century American cookbooks borrowed French kitchen vocabulary freely, and names like duchesse, marquise and royale were attached to sweet sauces and garnishes chiefly to signal richness rather than any fixed formula. What marks this one as belonging to the older school is its purpose: steamed, boiled and baked puddings were a standard close to a household dinner, and each needed a sauce, so books of this kind commonly carried a run of them, from plain sugar-and-butter hard sauces up to egg-thickened ones like this. The technique is a stirred custard, the same base as boiled custard and ice cream, here reduced to a pouring consistency and flavoured with chocolate at a time when block chocolate sold for cooking was usually unsweetened.