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Pudding Sauces
Cream 1/4 cup of butter in a warm bowl and add gradually 1½ cup of powdered sugar, and flavoring to suit taste, either brandy, vanilla or lemon.
Place in a fancy dish and grate nutmeg on top.
Apple Sauce 8 sour apples 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup water Cook in fireless 1 hour on one radiator, heated 450 degrees. Maple Sauce I An agreeable sauce served with a steamed pudding is made by dissolving ½ pint of maple sugar in a cup of water. Add to this 1/2 cup of butter mixed with 1 tablespoonful of flour.
Allow this to boil and flavor to taste.
Rhubarb Sauce Peel and cut rhubarb in inch pieces.
Cover with boiling water. Allow to stand 5 minutes. Drain, add 1 cup sugar to 2½ cups rhubarb and 1/4 cup water. Cook in fireless 1 hour on one radiator, heated 450 degrees.
Lemon Sauce 1/2 cup sugar 1 cup boiling water 1 tablespoon cornstarch 1/2 tablespoon flour 2 tablespoons butter 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice Few gratings nutmeg Few grains salt Mix sugar and cornstarch, add water gradually, stirring continually; boil 5 minutes, remove from fire, add butter, lemon juice and nutmeg.
Vanilla Sauce Make same as lemon sauce, using 1 teaspoon vanilla instead of lemon juice and nutmeg.
Chocolate Sauce 4 oz. unsweetened chocolate 1 cup sugar.
I/2 cup milk Melt chocolate and add sugar, then milk; boil 5 minutes, remove from fire and add 1 teaspoon vanilla. .
A cluster of seven dessert sauces from a fireless-cooker book, which means two of them assume equipment almost nobody owns. Everything here translates to a stovetop without difficulty.
- What the fireless cooker wasAn insulated box in which a soapstone or iron disc — the "radiator" — was heated on the range to a set temperature, then sealed in with the food to finish cooking by retained heat. "One radiator, heated 450 degrees" for an hour is roughly equivalent to a covered saucepan held at a bare simmer for 25-35 minutes.
- The untitled first sauceCreamed butter, powdered sugar and spirit or extract, served cold with nutmeg, is hard sauce — the traditional partner to steamed and plum puddings. It is not cooked at all. Use softened rather than melted butter and beat until it is pale and holds a shape.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period 'powdered sugar' was often a somewhat coarser grind than today's confectioners' sugar, but confectioners' is the closest substitute; sift it before beating in or the hard sauce will be gritty. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch, which is harmless here.
- Sour apples for the apple sauceGranny Smith, Bramley or any firm tart variety. Eight apples with only half a cup of water needs a heavy covered pan and a low flame — check it early, as modern thin-bottomed pans will scorch long before an hour is up.
- The maple sugar quantityThe maple sauce calls for half a pint of maple sugar to a cup of water, as our text now gives. Grated, that is about 8 oz, which yields a sauce of sensible sweetness.
- Flour in the lemon sauceThe ingredient list gives both cornstarch and half a tablespoon of flour, but the method only mentions cornstarch. Whisk the flour in with the sugar and cornstarch — it thickens dry and lumps if added later.
- Rhubarb, and its leavesUse stalks only; rhubarb leaves are high in oxalic acid and are discarded. The blanch-and-drain step takes off some of the sharpness; with tender young stalks you can skip it and cut the cooking to 15 minutes.
- Chocolate sauce proportionsFour ounces of unsweetened chocolate to one cup of sugar and only half a cup of milk boils down thick and sets firm as it cools. Serve it warm, or thin with additional hot milk if it is to be poured cold.
- YieldYields vary widely here: the hard sauce makes well under a cup, while the apple and maple sauces make several cups. The cooked sauces keep a week refrigerated; the hard sauce keeps longer and is better made a day ahead.
Fireless cookery had a real vogue in American households between about 1900 and the First World War, promoted as a fuel-saving method for coal and wood ranges: you heated a stone disc once, sealed it in a hay- or mineral-wool-lined box with the pot, and went about the day. A whole publishing genre of fireless cookbooks followed, and this page shows how such books handled the parts of a meal the box could not do — most pudding sauces are quick stovetop work, so only the two long-stewed fruit sauces get the radiator treatment while the rest are given as ordinary saucepan recipes. Hard sauce, the untitled first entry, is much older than any of this; it is the classic accompaniment to English steamed puddings, and its brandy version is often called brandy butter in Britain. Maple sugar in a book of this period was an everyday item chiefly in the maple-producing Northeast rather than a specialty item, sold in cakes to be grated as needed.