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Apricot Sauce
cup water 1 teaspoon cornstarch ½ cup apricot jam, or 1 cup apricot juice few grains salt 1 tablespoon lemon juice ½ cup sugar Boil all ingredients ten minutes. 1 cup chopped apple
The ingredient list was set in two columns and has run together in transcription; read it as 1 cup water, 1 teaspoon cornstarch, ½ cup apricot jam (or 1 cup apricot juice), a few grains of salt, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, ½ cup sugar, and 1 cup chopped apple, all boiled together for ten minutes.
- The apple is an ingredient, not a stray lineThe trailing "1 cup chopped apple" belongs in the list, not after the method. Peeled, cored and finely chopped apple cooks down over ten minutes into a soft pulp that carries pectin and body; leave it out and you have a thin glaze rather than a sauce.
- Slake the cornstarch firstA teaspoon of dry starch dropped into a pan of fruit and sugar will seize into lumps. Stir it into a few tablespoons of the cold water until smooth, then add the rest. This is the step the original assumes you already know.
- Ten minutes at a bare boilSugar at this concentration climbs in temperature as water evaporates, and jam scorches readily. Keep it at a lazy simmer with frequent stirring rather than a rolling boil, and use a heavy pan.
- Jam versus juice"Apricot juice" here most likely means the syrup drained from canned or home-bottled apricots rather than modern nectar. Nectar is sweeter and pulpier; if you use it, consider cutting the sugar to about ¼ cup and tasting before adding more.
- Few grains of saltA pinch, well under ⅛ teaspoon. It is there to sharpen the fruit, not to season.
- StrainingBoiled apricot jam leaves fruit shreds and the apple leaves pulp. For a glossy sauce over a moulded pudding or ice cream, press it through a sieve while hot; for a spooning sauce, leave it as it is.
- Yield and keepingRoughly 2 to 2½ cups. It thickens a little as it cools -- there is only a teaspoon of starch here, so expect a pourable sauce rather than a set one; loosen with a spoonful of hot water if needed. Keep it covered and chilled.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer, in the first decade of the twentieth century — one of many house cookbooks American food firms produced to put their product in domestic kitchens. Chocolate and cocoa figure heavily, but a full dessert chapter needed the standard repertoire of pudding sauces, and cornstarch-thickened fruit sauces suited it well: cheap, quick, and made from a jar of preserve or the syrup left over from a can of fruit rather than from fresh produce. The apple looks like an extender: sweetened apple added pectin and bulk while taking on the flavour around it, and apple pulp was also used in commercial "fruit" jams of the period.<br><br>Apricots reached eastern households mainly dried or canned; California was shipping both in quantity by 1900, which is why a Boston book could treat apricot as an everyday flavour rather than a luxury.