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Foamy Sauce
Whites of 2 eggs 1 cup sugar 1 cup scalded milk Juice of 1 lemon Beat the whites of the eggs until foamy but not stiff; add the sugar, then the hot milk and lemon juice. Serve hot.
A pudding sauce of the plainest kind: sweetened egg white slackened with hot milk and sharpened with lemon. It comes together in two minutes and collapses almost as fast, so have the thing it is meant to dress already on the plate.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk until it steams and a ring of small bubbles forms at the edge of the pan, about 180F. Do not let it boil; the point is heat, not reduction.
- Foamy, not stiffStop beating the whites while they still slump and flow — soft, glossy, barely holding a trace. Stiff peaks give a sauce that sits on the pudding in lumps rather than pouring over it.
- Add the lemon last, and slowlyAcid can curdle hot milk. Whisk the hot milk into the sweetened whites first, then dribble in the lemon juice while beating.
- Egg safetyThe hot milk warms the whites but does not reliably bring them to 160F. If you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized whites, or whisk the finished sauce over simmering water until it reaches 160F on a thermometer.
- SugarOrdinary granulated sugar is correct and a full cup is not a misprint — this is a sweet sauce for an unsweet pudding. Superfine dissolves faster in the whites and gives a smoother result.
- Yield and servingServe immediately over steamed or cottage pudding, gingerbread, or baked apples; it separates into liquid and froth quite quickly and does not reheat.
Foamy sauce belongs to the large family of American pudding sauces — hard sauce, liquid sauce, foamy sauce — that stood in for cream. The trick of it is old and thrifty: two egg whites and a cup of sugar, beaten to volume, will dress a whole pudding for the price of the eggs, while the scalded milk does the double duty of warming the sauce and cooking it a little. Recipes of this shape — four ingredients, no fat, and a lesson in what beaten egg white will do — are of a kind with the domestic-science cookery teaching of the period.