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Italian Sauce
2 tablespoons butter cup powdered sugar 2 teaspoons cornstarch ½ cup candied cherries 3 egg yolks juice and rind of 1 lemon cup boiling water 1/2 cup angelica cut in pieces Cream butter; add sugar and cornstarch, yolks of eggs well beaten, and boiling water; boil three minutes; add remaining ingredients and serve.
A rich lemon-and-egg dessert sauce of the hard-sauce family, thickened with cornstarch and studded with candied fruit. It is meant to be spooned warm over a steamed or baked pudding rather than eaten alone.
- The hinge: keep the yolks movingBeaten yolks added to creamed butter and then hit with boiling water will curdle if left to sit. Whisk constantly from the moment the water goes in and keep whisking through the three minutes of boiling, or strain the finished sauce.
- Boiling with cornstarchThree minutes at a full boil is not excessive here: cornstarch needs to reach and hold a boil to lose its raw taste and set its thickening power. Below a boil the sauce stays thin and chalky.
- Missing quantitiesSeveral of the cup measures in this listing have lost their fractions: the sugar, the boiling water and the angelica are all given as bare "cup." The proportions cannot be recovered from the text; something in the region of half a cup of sugar, half a cup of water and a quarter cup of angelica will work, but treat that as guesswork and adjust the water to the consistency you want.
- AngelicaThe candied stem of Angelica archangelica, sold in bright green batons and once standard in confectioners' shops. It is scarce now; candied citron, candied lemon peel or additional cherries stand in without much loss.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this date, powdered sugar generally means finely granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine sugar is the closest match, and it dissolves cleanly into the creamed butter.
- Lemon rindZest only, taken with a fine grater or a rasp; the white pith turns the sauce bitter. Add the juice and zest after the boiling, as the recipe directs, so the aroma is not driven off.
- Yield and servingServing -- Serve warm over cottage pudding, steamed fruit pudding or plain cake; it thickens considerably as it cools and can be loosened with a spoonful of hot water.
Sauces of this type — creamed butter, sugar, egg yolk and a flavoring, brought together with boiling water — filled a long section in nearly every American cookbook of the early twentieth century, when a plain steamed or baked pudding was expected to arrive under something rich. The names attached to them were largely decorative, and what "Italian" was meant to signal here is not recorded. Angelica, the green candied stem that gives the sauce much of its look, was long a staple of confectionery and cake decoration and became increasingly hard to find in ordinary American kitchens over the twentieth century. Lowney's book, issued by a chocolate manufacturer, carried a full complement of such general household recipes alongside the cocoa and confectionery work that was its commercial reason for existing.