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Three Eggs (One gill of Cream or Milk)
One gill of Cream or Milk.
One wineglassful of Brandy.
One dessertspoonful of Castor Sugar.
Put the yolks of eggs into a milk saucepan, add the cream, brandy, and sugar; whisk all well together for six or eight minutes. Be careful that it does not curdle.
This is a brandy custard sauce of the plum-pudding sort, and the whole of it hangs on temperature control. The title supplies the ingredient the ingredient list forgets: three eggs, of which only the yolks are used.
- The hinge: gentle, indirect heatThe instruction "be careful that it does not curdle" is the recipe. Yolks set at around 160-175F, so whisk the mixture in a bowl over barely simmering water, or in the pan over the lowest possible flame, and pull it the moment it coats the back of a spoon. A thermometer removed at 175F takes the guesswork out.
- A gillIn a British book of this period a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz, or about 150 ml. That is a generous half cup plus a splash, not the 4 fl oz American gill.
- A wineglassfulConventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz (60 ml) in Victorian and Edwardian cookery. With only 150 ml of cream behind it this is a strongly alcoholic sauce; a smaller pour is defensible if it is going to children or over a delicate pudding.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar, which dissolves quickly in a mixture that must not be cooked long. A dessertspoonful is roughly two teaspoons, so this is a barely sweet sauce by modern standards.
- A milk saucepanA small, straight-sided pan for scalding milk, sometimes enamelled or lined. A modern heavy-based small saucepan is the equivalent, and a stainless bowl set over water is safer still.
- Whisking timeSix to eight minutes suggests hand whisking, and the curdling warning implies gentle heat, though the recipe does not say so outright; the mixture should thicken and gain some volume. An electric hand whisk gets there faster, so judge by the coating consistency rather than the clock.
- If it does splitTake it off the heat at once, tip it into a cold bowl and whisk hard; a tablespoon of cold cream will often bring it back. Once it has gone visibly grainy it will not recover.
- Yield and servingSomething over a cup of sauce, enough for four to six modest servings. Serve warm and at once over steamed or plum pudding, as it will slacken and separate if held.
Sauces of this kind sit between the French sabayon and the English "wine sauce" served with boiled and steamed puddings, and the family resemblance is close: yolks, sugar and spirit whisked over heat until foamy. Brandy was a common choice in British kitchens, its flavour standing up to a heavily spiced pudding where a lighter wine would have vanished. The oddity of the title, in which the eggs appear in the heading rather than the ingredient list, suggests a collection written as an aide-memoire for cooks who already knew the method and needed reminding chiefly of the proportions.