Home › Fish › Two Whites of Eggs
Two Whites of Eggs
Three Yolks of Eggs. Half a gill of Cream.
One ounce and a half of castor Sugar.
Half a wineglassful of Maraschino.
Put all the above ingredients into a small stewpan, beat them with a whisk, stand the pan in a bain-marie, or a larger vessel, three parts full of boiling water. Stir until it becomes creamy, but do not allow it to boil. Serve with hot sweet puddings, etc.
A whisked liqueur sauce in the sabayon family, built on egg whites rather than yolks. The title is simply the first line of the ingredient list, which is why the page opens mid-sentence, and the placement under "Fish" is a compositor's error — this is a pudding sauce.
- GillA gill is a quarter of an imperial pint (5 fl oz), so half a gill is about 2½ fl oz of cream, a scant third of a cup.
- WineglassfulAn old wineglass is reckoned at roughly 2 fl oz, making half a glass about 1 fl oz, or two tablespoons, of maraschino. Adjust to taste; the liqueur is the whole point of the sauce.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. An ounce and a half is around 3 tablespoons. Granulated works if you whisk long enough to dissolve it, but superfine dissolves before the eggs set.
- Whites, not yolksUnlike a classic sabayon this uses whites only, which gives a paler, lighter, foamier sauce that sets firmer if overheated. It also means there is no yolk fat to buffer the heat, so it is less forgiving than a yolk-based version.
- The hingeKeep the water below a simmer and the mixture gentle: egg white starts to set at around 145-150F, so it will curdle sooner than a yolk sauce. Whisk without pause; once it has gone granular no amount of beating brings it back.
- Bain-marieAny bowl or small pan set over a larger one of hot water. The recipe calls for the outer vessel to be three parts full of boiling water; in practice steady heat rather than a rolling boil suits an egg-white sauce better.
- MaraschinoThe clear Dalmatian cherry-kernel liqueur, not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Luxardo is the readily available brand.
- Yield and servingA small quantity, enough for a few servings over a steamed or baked pudding. It will not hold long over warm water, so make it as the pudding comes out.
Whisked wine-and-egg sauces run through nineteenth-century professional cookery under a shelf of names — sabayon in France, zabaione in Italy — and this is a variant that swaps the customary yolks for whites and the customary Marsala or sherry for maraschino. Maraschino itself is distilled from Marasca cherries, stones and all, and is generally said to have been made commercially at Zadar on the Dalmatian coast from around the eighteenth century; by the late Victorian period it was a standard flavouring in the English confectioner's cupboard, used for jellies, ices and trifles as much as for drinking. Its appearance here marks the sauce as a dining-room flourish rather than everyday fare: an expensive imported liqueur, a few pence of sugar, and a technique that demands a cook standing over a bain-marie with a whisk at exactly the moment the pudding is dished.