Wine Sauce
Dissolve one pound sugar in a little water. Boil till nearly candied. Add a lump of butter the size of an egg, just before taking it off the fire, and stir in wine and nutmeg to your taste, after taking it off.-Mrs. R. Wine Sauce.
Melt half a pound of butter, three cupfuls sugar and two of Madeira wine together, for a large pudding. Put a little water in the stewpan and let it boil. Roll the butter in a little flour, and stir it in the boiling water quickly. Then add the sugar, and lastly the wine.--Mrs. T. Wine Sauce.
One-half pound butter, yolks of two eggs, beaten well and creamed with the butter; nine tablespoonfuls nice brown sugar; two glasses of wine. Let it simmer on the fire a short time. Grate nutmeg on it when you pour it into the sauce-bowl.-Mrs. T.
Three versions of the same dessert sauce, meant to be spooned hot over a boiled or baked pudding. The first is a sugar syrup enriched with butter, the second a flour-thickened sauce, the third a custard — and the third is the one that needs watching.
- The hinge: the third version must not boilEgg yolks creamed with butter and sugar will curdle above roughly 180F. Simmer is the wrong word for it; hold the pan over low heat or a bowl of barely trembling water, stir constantly, and pull it once it thickens and coats the spoon. For safety with the yolks, bring it to 160F and hold it there briefly rather than serving it barely warmed.
- "A lump of butter the size of an egg"About 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons, is the usual modern reading. Butter was often cut from a crock or mould rather than sold pre-weighed, and comparative sizes were one common way of indicating quantity.
- "Boil till nearly candied"A syrup boiled well past the thread stage; the recipe gives no temperature and any thermometer figure is a guess. Take it off before it colours; caramel here will fight the wine. "A little water" means only enough to dissolve the sugar.
- "Two glasses of wine""Two glasses of wine" (Mrs. T.'s egg version) -- Genuinely elastic in this period. A wineglassful was often reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces in cookbooks of the era, which would make two glasses roughly half a cup, but household glasses ran larger. Add it gradually and taste; it is Mrs. R.'s sauce that says outright to add wine "to your taste."
- Madeira and its substitutesMrs. T. calls for Madeira, and a medium-dry Rainwater or Verdelho is closest to what she would have had. Sherry works; so does a tawny port, though it sweetens the sauce further. Cooking wine sold under that name is salted and will ruin it.
- "Nice brown sauce""Nice brown sugar" -- "Nice brown" suggests a clean light brown sugar rather than a molasses-heavy dark brown. Light brown sugar is the closest modern choice.
- The flour in version twoRolling the butter in a little flour works much like a beurre manie: the fat coats the starch so it does not lump when it hits boiling water. The recipe specifies only "a little flour"; keep the sauce pourable rather than gravy-thick.
- YieldOnly the second version states a quantity, "for a large pudding," and its ingredients come to well over a quart; the third makes roughly two cups. All three are meant to be served hot and will stiffen as they cool.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the filled bowl as directed. Pre-ground nutmeg loses its volatile oils quickly and the sauce has little else to hide behind.
Wine sauce was the standard dressing for the heavy steamed and boiled puddings that closed a Virginia dinner — plum pudding, roly-poly, batter pudding — and its presence in triplicate here, each version signed with an initial, shows how Housekeeping in Old Virginia (compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, first edition usually dated 1878) was assembled: contributors sent in what they actually made, and the editor printed the variants side by side rather than choosing among them. Madeira in particular is often said to have had a long hold on the Virginia sideboard, having reached the colonies in quantity because it was exempt from some of the trade restrictions that burdened European wines, and because the fortified wine survived an Atlantic crossing and a hot cellar in a way claret did not. The three recipes also trace a hierarchy of richness — syrup, then flour-thickened, then egg-enriched.