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Foamy Sauce
6 tablespoons butter 1 cup powdered sugar 3 eggs 2 tablespoons boiling water 1 teaspoon vanilla or other flavoring Cream butter; add sugar slowly, beating all the time; beat egg yolks until thick and add gradually; beat well; add stiffly beaten whites of eggs, flavoring and boiling water. Before serving heat over boiling water five minutes, stirring constantly.
Royal is made from Cream of Tartar Maple Sauce 1 cup sugar 1 cup water 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon maple flavoring 1 teaspoon corn starch Heat half the sugar in frying pan; stir continually; when brown add water and boil; add remainder of sugar, corn starch mixed with a little cold water, lemon juice and maple flavoring; boil 3 minutes; serve hot.
Two dessert sauces printed together, both meant to be poured hot over puddings, gingerbread or doughnuts. The line about Royal cream of tartar is advertising copy from the publisher, not an instruction.
- The hinge: gentle heat onlyThe foamy sauce is an egg foam bound with butter, and direct heat will scramble it. Set the bowl over water that is barely simmering, not boiling hard against the base, and stir without stopping for the full five minutes.
- Egg donenessFive minutes over water is enough to thicken the sauce but the original gives no temperature. Take it to 160F on an instant-read thermometer, or use pasteurized eggs, particularly if serving to anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised.
- Powdered sugarConfectioners' sugar, and the modern kind contains about 3 percent cornstarch, which is harmless here and slightly helps the sauce hold. Sift it before creaming or the butter will stay grainy.
- Order of operationsFold the beaten whites in last and by hand. Beating them in with the mixer, as the wording almost invites, knocks out the foam the sauce is named for.
- The boiling waterTwo tablespoons of boiling water loosens the creamed butter and helps it stay emulsified. Add it in a thin stream at the end rather than all at once.
- Dry caramel in the maple sauceHalf a cup of sugar melted in a frying pan is a dry caramel; it goes from amber to burnt in seconds. When the water hits it the mixture will spit violently and the sugar will seize into a lump, which is expected. Keep boiling and stirring and it dissolves again.
- Maple flavoringAn imitation extract. A tablespoon of extract is a lot by current strength, so start with a teaspoon and taste. Real maple syrup can stand in but will thin the sauce, so cut the water accordingly.
- CornstarchSlake it in a spoonful of cold water before it goes into the pan, as directed, and give it the full three minutes at a boil to lose the raw starch taste.
- YieldEach sauce makes roughly a cup and a half, enough for six to eight servings. The foamy sauce does not hold; make it the same day and reheat only over water.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and pages like this one carry the house slogan mid-recipe: Royal was a cream of tartar baking powder, and the firm spent decades campaigning against cheaper alum-based rivals, a commercial fight that spilled into state legislatures and newspaper advertising in the early twentieth century. The recipes themselves are conventional American home cooking of the period. Foamy sauce belongs to a large family of nineteenth-century pudding sauces built on creamed butter and sugar, of which hard sauce is the uncooked cousin; the foamy version adds beaten eggs and a brief warming so that it arrives at the table hot and frothy over steamed pudding or plain cake.