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Hot Maple Sauce
1/2 cup water 1/2 cup English walnut-meats 1 pound (2 cups) maple sugar or 2 cups brown sugar Add the water to the maple sugar and boil until it reaches the "thread" stage. Add the English walnut-meats broken into small pieces. This sauce is good with vanilla ice-cream, blanc mange or custard.
A two-ingredient boiled sugar sauce. Everything depends on stopping at the right stage, which a thermometer settles faster than any spoon test.
- "Thread" stage in numbersThread is generally given as roughly 230-234F (110-112C) on a candy thermometer, the point at which a little syrup lifted on a spoon falls in a fine thread rather than in drops. Cooked much beyond that, towards the soft-ball point around 240F, the sauce will be too thick to pour once cool.
- English walnutsThese are the ordinary walnuts sold today, Juglans regia, named in old American books to distinguish them from native black walnuts. Black walnuts will work but are much stronger and will dominate the maple.
- Maple sugar weightA pound of maple sugar is called two cups here. Cup measures for sugar vary with how it is broken up or granulated, so weigh the pound rather than trusting the cup measure.
- The brown sugar versionTwo cups packed brown sugar substitutes directly but gives a molasses sauce, not a maple one.
- Stir at the start onlyDissolve the sugar in the water over moderate heat, then stop stirring once it boils. Agitating a hot sugar syrup encourages it to crystallize and go grainy.
- Adding the nutsTake the pan off the heat before the walnuts go in. Cold nutmeats drop the temperature of the syrup and any water on them can cause spitting.
- Yield and reheatingThe recipe gives no yield; a pound of sugar plus half a cup of nutmeats makes a good deal more than a single serving's worth. It thickens considerably as it cools; warm it gently with a teaspoon of water to bring it back to pouring consistency.
- Blanc mangeThe cornstarch or gelatin milk pudding named as an accompaniment is barely made now. The sauce serves the same purpose over panna cotta, baked custard or a plain steamed pudding.