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Pudding Sauce (One cupful of butter two)
One cupful of butter; two cupfuls sugar; three eggs; one wine-glass of wine. Stir well, and let it come to a boil.-Mrs. F. D.
Pudding Sauce.
Cream together half a pound of sugar and butter. Add the yolk of one egg, the juice of a lemon, and a glass of wine. Stir over a slow fire, but don't boil.-Mrs. McG.
Two versions of the same thing sit side by side here: a hard-ish boiled sauce and a gentler creamed one. The difference between them is the egg, and the second recipe's warning not to boil is the whole technique.
- The hinge: heat controlBoth sauces are butter-sugar-egg emulsions, which means they curdle once the egg protein sets. Mrs. McG.'s "slow fire, but don't boil" means a double boiler or the lowest possible burner with constant stirring, pulled off at about 165-170F when it coats a spoon. Mrs. F. D.'s sauce is boiled; the recipe does not say why hers will take a boil and the other will not, so take it to a bare bubble and no further.
- A wine-glassIn American cookbooks of this period a wine-glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, or 1/4 cup. Sherry, Madeira and brandy were all used in sauces of this kind; brandy is stronger, so use less.
- "Half a pound of sugar and butter"This reads as half a pound of each: 1 cup sugar and 2 sticks (8 oz) butter. Half a pound divided between the two is possible but would give an unusually lean sauce for the period.
- ButterNineteenth-century butter was usually salted and often quite salty. Use unsalted and add a pinch of salt to taste, which gives you control over a sauce that is otherwise very sweet.
- Eggs, whole versus yolkThe first sauce uses three whole eggs, the second a single yolk, so the first will set up appreciably thicker and the second stay closer to a pouring sauce. Neither will hold if reheated hard, so make them just before serving.
- If it breaksA curdled sauce can sometimes be saved by pulling it off the heat and whisking in a tablespoon of cold cream or a splash of the wine. Straining it removes the set egg but not the grain.
- YieldThe first recipe makes roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups, enough for eight to ten servings of a steamed or boiled pudding. The second makes about 1 1/2 cups. Serve warm, spooned over the pudding at the table.
Boiled and steamed puddings were a common winter dessert in Virginia kitchens, and they were often served with a sweet sauce built on butter, sugar and fortified wine, closely related to the English "hard sauce" or brandy butter that is not cooked at all. That Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) prints two pudding sauces together, each credited to a different contributor by initial, reflects how the book was assembled \— Marion Cabell Tyree collected recipes from some 250 Virginia housewives, so the same dish often appears two or three times in slightly different hands. The reliance on Madeira and sherry is worth noting: both were long-standing staples of the Virginia sideboard, imported through Atlantic trade and kept for cooking as much as for drinking.