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Lemon Sauce II
1/2 cup sugar 1 cup boiling water 1 tablespoon corn-starch or 1 1/2 tablespoons flour 2 tablespoons butter 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice Few gratings nutmeg Few grains salt Mix sugar and corn-starch, add water gradually, stirring constantly; boil five minutes, remove from fire, add butter, lemon juice, and nutmeg.
A cornstarch-thickened lemon sauce of the Fannie Farmer school, meant to be spooned hot over steamed or baked puddings. It comes together in under ten minutes and the whole trick is in the order of operations.
- Dry mix firstWhisking the sugar and cornstarch together while dry is what keeps the sauce smooth. The sugar separates the starch grains so they hydrate one at a time instead of clumping when the boiling water hits.
- Boil the full five minutesCornstarch thickens well before it stops tasting raw and chalky. Five minutes at a real boil, stirring, cooks out the starchy flavour and sets the final consistency. The recipe allows flour as a substitute and gives it the same five minutes.
- Butter and juice off the heatAcid can thin a starch-thickened sauce if it is held at heat, and butter beaten in over the burner is likelier to separate. That is presumably why the recipe has you remove the pan from the fire before adding either.
- The saltThe method never says where the few grains of salt go; adding them with the sugar and starch at the start is the usual reading. Use a pinch; it sharpens the lemon rather than making the sauce taste salty.
- Lemon juiceFresh juice; 1 1/2 tablespoons is roughly half to a whole lemon, depending on size. A little grated zest added with the juice, though not in the original, deepens the flavour without adding acid.
- YieldMakes about a cup, enough for six modest servings over cottage pudding, gingerbread, or a steamed suet pudding. It thickens further as it cools, so serve it hot or thin it with a spoonful of boiling water.
Pudding sauces took up substantial space in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the puddings themselves were plain by design: steamed batters, boiled rice, bread and butter, cottage pudding. The sauce carried the flavour and the butter. Lemon was a common choice outside berry season, being cheap and keeping well. The pattern here, sugar and starch cooked with boiling water and enriched off the fire, is the same one used for the orange and vanilla sauces in the same chapters.