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Creamy Sauce
1/4 cup butter 2 cups powdered sugar 1 egg 1/2 cup thick cream 1 teaspoon vanilla Cream the butter and sugar; add the well-beaten egg and beat all thoroughly. When very light add the cream, a little at a time. Place the bowl in a vessel of boiling water and stir until the sauce is smooth and creamy, but no longer; add flavoring and serve.
CARAMEL SAUCE No. 1 1 cup granulated sugar 1 cup hot water Melt the sugar in an iron saucepan and stir until it is a light brown; add the boiling water; cook for two minutes; pour into a bowl and set aside to cool.
CARAMEL SAUCE No. 2 1 cup granulated sugar 2½ tablespoons cornstarch 4 tablespoons cold water 1 cup boiling water 3/4 tablespoon vanilla 1 teaspoon corn syrup Mix the sugar and cornstarch thoroughly: moisten with the cold water and heat slowly in a granite saucepan until of a delicate brown color. Add the boiling water; cook until clear; add flavoring and serve hot or cold.
Three sauces for ice cream and puddings, all quick, all built on sugar. The creamy sauce is the fussy one; the two caramels are mostly a matter of nerve.
- The hinge: don't cook the creamy sauce past thickButter, sugar and egg over hot water will curdle if it gets too hot. The recipe sets the bowl in a vessel of boiling water; gentler control comes from setting it over simmering water instead. Stir constantly and pull it off as soon as it turns glossy and coats the spoon.
- The raw-ish eggAs written, the egg may never pass 140F. If that matters in your household, use a pasteurized egg, or stir to 160F on an instant-read thermometer before adding the vanilla, accepting a slightly thicker sauce.
- "Thick cream"Period usage for the richest cream sold, roughly comparable to today's heavy or whipping cream and unhomogenized. Heavy or whipping cream is the substitute; do not use half-and-half, which will thin the sauce badly.
- Powdered sugarIn period usage this may mean finely ground sugar rather than today's confectioners' sugar, which contains a little cornstarch; modern confectioners' sugar is the usual substitute. Two cups is about 8 oz, so this is a very sweet sauce meant to be spooned in small quantities over plain ice cream or a steamed pudding.
- Caramel No. 1: the iron pan and the spatterAn iron saucepan is called for, presumably for steady, even heat; a heavy stainless or enameled pan works as well and lets you judge the color. Adding water to melted sugar at around 340F spatters violently he pside of the pan, and expect the caramel to seize into a lump before it dissolves again.
- Caramel No. 2 is not really caramelCaramel No. 2 is not really the same thing -- The damp sugar and cornstarch brown only lightly, so the caramel flavour is milder and the sauce slightly floury, and it thickens on cooling from the starch. The teaspoon of corn syrup helps keep the sugar from recrystallizing into grit.
- "Granite saucepan"Graniteware. Any nonreactive heavy pan will do.
- YieldEach of the caramels makes about a cup; the creamy sauce makes roughly a cup and a half. Figure six to eight servings apiece. The creamy sauce is best used the day it is made, refrigerated, and warmed gently over water if it stiffens.
Sauces like these belong to the era when "frozen desserts" at home meant a hand-cranked freezer full of plain vanilla or a simple water ice, and the interest of the dish lay in what you poured over it. A cook with three sauces on file could serve the same ice cream three nights running. The two caramels show the two schools plainly: No. 1 is the older, purer method, dry sugar melted until it browns and then let down with water, while No. 2 hedges with cornstarch and a spoonful of corn syrup for kitchens from the turn of the century, and is often said to have been favored for its resistance to graininess.