Rum Sauce
½ cup powdered sugar 2 egg whites 2 egg yolks 3 tablespoons rum ½ cup beaten cream Mix sugar, yolks of eggs and rum, then the stiffly beaten whites. Cook until thick; add the beaten cream. Chill and serve. 4 egg yolks + cup wine Sabayon Sauce No. I 4 tablespoons powdered sugar 1 tablespoon lemon juice Mix all ingredients and, just before serving, cook over hot water until it begins to thicken. 1 whole egg 2 egg yolks Sabayon Sauce No. 2 ½ cup sugar ½ cup sherry 1 tablespoon lemon juice Mix all ingredients and cook over hot water, stirring constantly until mixture thickens.
A stirred egg-and-spirit custard of the sabayon family, lightened with whipped cream and served cold over puddings. The whole thing rests on gentle heat and constant motion.
- Cook it over water, not direct heatThe instruction to "cook until thick" assumes a double boiler, as the sabayon variants alongside it make explicit. Set the bowl over barely simmering water and whisk without stopping; on a direct burner the yolks scramble within seconds.
- How thick is thickTake it to about 170F, when it coats a spoon and holds a brief trail from the whisk. That also puts the eggs past the 160F mark, which matters here because the sauce is then chilled and served without further cooking.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term generally means finely ground granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Ordinary granulated or superfine sugar dissolves cleanly into the yolks and is the closer match.
- "½ cup beaten cream""½ cup beaten cream" is ambiguous: it may mean half a cup of cream measured before beating or half a cup once whipped. The recipe adds it while the custard is still hot and chills afterwards; if you want the cream to stay light, let the custard cool first, since warm custard deflates whipped cream and the sauce turns thin.
- Order of operationsBeating the whites stiff and cooking them into the base gives a foam rather than a smooth custard. Fold them in off the heat at the end if you want a lighter sauce that does not weep.
- The rumThree tablespoons in a sauce this small is assertive. A dark or aged rum carries better against sugar and cream than a light one, and little of the alcohol cooks off at these temperatures.
- Yield and keepingAbout a cup and a half, enough for six modest servings over steamed pudding, plum pudding or poached fruit. It will hold a few hours refrigerated but separates by the next day; whisk briefly before serving.
Rum sauce belongs to the same family as zabaglione, the Italian whisked custard of yolks, sugar and sweet wine that the French adopted as sabayon and English cooks anglicised as "sabayon sauce" or, in older books, "wine froth." Lowney's book was published by a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like most manufacturer cookbooks of the era it padded its branded chocolate recipes with a full set of general kitchen standards so the volume could serve as a household reference. Boiled and steamed puddings appear to have ended a great many American meals in the early twentieth century, and a spirited egg sauce seems to have been the usual way of dressing them, though this is inference rather than documented practice; the substitution of rum for the Italian Marsala plausibly reflects both New England's long trade in West Indian rum and the likelihood that rum was simply the spirit most often in the house.