Rum Sauce
1/2 cup sugar 1 cup boiling water 1/4 cup rum or wine Make a syrup by boiling sugar and water five minutes; then add rum or wine.
A plain sugar syrup flavored with spirits, of the kind poured over steamed puddings and plum pudding. The whole of the technique is in when the rum goes in.
- Add the rum off the heatThe recipe says only to add the spirit after the syrup has boiled; safest is to pull the pan off the burner first, since boiling after the rum goes in costs some of the alcohol and much of the aroma, which is most of what the sauce has to offer.
- Timing and consistencyFive minutes at a rolling boil at this proportion of sugar to water gives a thin syrup, thinner again once the spirit is stirred in. Longer boiling will thicken it.
- YieldAbout a cup of finished sauce, enough for six to eight servings of pudding or cake spooned over rather than pooled.
- Which rumA dark or amber rum carries here; white rum contributes alcohol and little else. Some period recipes of this type called for a heavy Jamaica rum. For the wine version, a sweet sherry, madeira or marsala suits it better than a table wine.
- SugarOrdinary granulated white sugar is what is meant. Brown sugar makes a good sauce but a different one, closer to butterscotch.
- Serving temperatureServe warm. Chilled, the alcohol tastes sharp and the syrup thickens unevenly; it reheats gently without harm.
- KeepingCovered and refrigerated it keeps several days. Stir before reheating.
Rum sauce belongs to the long English tradition of hard and soft sauces poured over boiled and steamed puddings, and it crossed into American cookbooks with them. A syrup-based version like this one is cheaper than a butter-and-sugar hard sauce, and plain versions appear often in household manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The alternative of "rum or wine" in a single line lets the cook use whatever bottle the house happened to keep. The instruction to boil sugar and water for a fixed number of minutes belongs to a period when candy thermometers were uncommon in home kitchens and syrup stages were judged by the clock and the look of the drip.