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Sauce au Liqueur
(Sweet Sauce with Liqueur.) Ingredients.
One ounce of fresh Butter.
Half an ounce of Flour.
One gill of Milk.
One ounce of Sugar.
One whole Egg.
Half a teaspoonful of Vanilla Essence.
Half an ounce of finely chopped Pistachios.
Half an ounce of finely chopped Lemon Peel.
One tablespoonful of Red Curaçoa.
Melt the butter in a small stewpan, stir in the flour, and blend over the fire for a few seconds; moisten slowly with the milk, add the sugar and stir well over the fire, beat up the egg and add also. Strain the sauce into another saucepan, let it get hot but not boiling, stir in the lemon peel, pistachios and curaçoa, and serve as directed.
A small egg-enriched sweet sauce, closer to a thin pastry cream than to a custard sauce, meant to be spooned over hot puddings and soufflés. Nearly everything hinges on the temperature at the end.
- Never let it boilThe recipe is explicit: "let it get hot but not boiling." The flour gives some protection, but once the beaten egg is in, hard boiling risks curdling and losing the smoothness you strained for. Keep it below a simmer.
- The gillIn a British book of this period a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz or about 150 ml. American readers should note their own gill was 4 fl oz; the larger measure gives a sauce of pouring consistency here.
- Small weightsOne ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons, half an ounce of flour about 2 level tablespoons, one ounce of sugar about 2 tablespoons. These quantities are small enough that a scale is worth using.
- Red CuraçoaCuraçao is a bitter-orange peel liqueur; the red-tinted bottling the author calls for has largely disappeared, though the blue is the same liqueur with colouring added, and dry orange liqueurs of the triple sec type are close relatives. Use a tablespoon of any decent orange liqueur.
- The lemon peel is ambiguousThe original does not say whether this is fresh zest or candied peel. In a sweet sauce of this style candied peel is the likelier reading, but fresh zest works and is less sugary; the recipe will not tell you which the author meant.
- PistachiosUse unsalted nuts, and blanch and skin them if you want the clean green the Victorian kitchen was after. Chop them fine and add after straining, or they will be caught in the sieve.
- Order of operationsStrain first, then stir in nuts, peel and liqueur. The alcohol goes in off strong heat so it keeps its perfume rather than cooking away.
- YieldAbout a cup of sauce, enough for four servings. Serve warm; it thickens considerably as it cools and will need thinning with a little milk if held.
Sweet liqueur sauces like this belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian professional repertoire, where a hot soufflé or steamed pudding was often finished with a small saucepan of enriched sauce, flavoured with whatever bottle came to hand. Curaçao takes its name from the Caribbean island, and is generally traced to the bitter laraha oranges grown there, descendants of Spanish plantings; by the nineteenth century the liqueur was made in quantity in the Netherlands and sold in several tinted versions, of which the red has since faded from the market. The pistachio and candied-peel garnish follows the same decorative logic that governs the period's ices and creams: a little green and a little gold, chopped fine.