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Raspberry Sauce
A fruit sauce that tastes especially good with cereals is raspberry sauce. Rub through a strainer fine enough to hold back the seeds, sufficient canned raspberries or fresh raspberry sauce, to make one cup. 1 cup raspberry pulp or juice 1 tablespoon cornstarch 1 tablespoon water Heat the raspberry pulp to boiling. With a batter whip stir the cornstarch and water together, then stir it into the boiling juice. Allow it to cook gently for two minutes.
Rice, whole or cracked wheat, Scotch oatmeal, and pearl barley, served with gravy instead of cream, make palatable and nutritious dishes for either breakfast or dinner. Cream sauce may be used, or one of the gravies to be used with macaroni, recipes for which will be given in another section.
A two-ingredient fruit thickening, essentially a raspberry coulis set with cornstarch. The only technical point is how the starch is added and how long it cooks.
- The hinge: temper the starchCornstarch stirred into hot liquid as dry powder will lump. Slake it with the cold tablespoon of water into a smooth slurry first, then pour it into the boiling pulp while whisking. A "batter whip" is simply a wire whisk.
- Two minutes is the minimum, not a guidelineCornstarch reaches full thickening power only after it boils, and a short cook also removes the raw-starch taste. Keep it at a lazy bubble for the full two minutes, stirring, then take it off. Prolonged boiling or vigorous whisking after it sets will thin the sauce again.
- Quantity of fruitOne cup of strained pulp takes roughly 3 cups of fresh raspberries, or about a 12 oz package of frozen, or one standard 15 oz can with its syrup; these are approximations, so strain and then measure to the cup the recipe calls for. Frozen berries work as well as canned and need only to be thawed before straining.
- No sugar is specifiedCanned raspberries were commonly packed in syrup, which may be why none is called for. With fresh or unsweetened frozen fruit the sauce will be sharp; 2 to 4 tablespoons of sugar stirred in before the starch is a reasonable range, to taste.
- StrainingA fine mesh sieve and the back of a ladle will do it. Press until only dry seeds remain rather than pouring off the free juice, or you lose most of the body and the sauce will taste thin.
- Yield and consistencyAbout one cup, enough for four servings over cereal. One tablespoon of cornstarch to one cup of liquid gives a pourable sauce that coats a spoon; it will set noticeably firmer once cold, and can be loosened with a spoonful of water when reheated.
- The grains namedScotch oatmeal is coarse-cut or coarsely ground oatmeal, close to modern steel-cut oats; pearl barley and cracked wheat are still sold under those names. All three want longer cooking than rolled oats, roughly 20 to 45 minutes depending on the grain.
Fruit sauces and savory gravies poured over whole grains in place of milk and cream are associated with the American health-reform cookery of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which cooked grains were promoted as the foundation of a wholesome meal. The instruction to serve rice, cracked wheat, oatmeal or barley "with gravy instead of cream" points in that direction. The sauce itself is a plain starch-bound fruit sauce, and it would have depended on home-canned or commercially canned raspberries, since fresh berries had a short season.