Home › Desserts › Claret Sauce
Claret Sauce
1 cup water 1 cup claret Boil sugar and water until syrupy, add claret, and serve hot or cold. ½ cup sugar 2 eggs
A two-ingredient dessert syrup: sugar cooked to a light syrup, then let down with red wine. The only thing to get right is how far you take the sugar.
- ClaretIn American and British books of this period claret means dry red Bordeaux, or any dry red in that style. A modest Merlot or Cabernet blend works; avoid anything oaky, jammy or sweet, since the sugar is already supplying the sweetness.
- Syrup stageThe recipe asks only that the sugar and water be boiled "until syrupy", with no temperature or time given; take it to the point where the liquid coats a spoon and falls in a slow ribbon. Cooked much further it will thicken to a candy consistency as it cools.
- Add the wine off the heatStir the claret into the hot syrup away from the burner. Boiling it afterward drives off the wine's aroma and leaves only acidity and colour.
- ConsistencyAdding a full cup of cold wine thins the syrup considerably. If you want a sauce that clings, reduce the water to 3/4 cup or simmer the finished sauce two or three minutes to tighten it.
- Yield and servingAbout a pint, enough for six to eight servings. It is a pouring sauce for steamed puddings, plain cake, poached pears or ice cream, and thickens slightly on chilling.
- KeepingSugar and wine keep well; refrigerate in a jar for up to two weeks and warm gently before serving hot.
- AlcoholNothing here is cooked long enough to drive off much alcohol. Serve accordingly.
Wine sauces of this kind were a fixture of nineteenth-century dessert cookery, standing in for the richer custard and butter sauces when something bright and clear was wanted against a heavy pudding. The word claret comes from the Old French clairet, a pale wine, and settled in English usage as the trade name for the red wines of Bordeaux, which arrived in quantity through the long British and later American trade in that region. Lowney's, a Boston chocolate house, published its cook book to promote its cocoa and chocolate, but the volume covers a full domestic repertoire, sauces like this one included.