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Jelly Sauce
2 tablespoons jelly 1 cup water 1 tablespoon sugar 1 teaspoon cornstarch Put water into saucepan; bring to a boil; add jelly and sugar; stir until dissolved; then add cornstarch wet with a little cold water; boil 3 minutes.
A thin, glossy dessert sauce built on the simplest of thickeners. It comes together in under ten minutes and wants only a little attention at the slurry stage.
- What "jelly" means hereA clear fruit jelly of the currant, apple, quince or grape sort, not jam and not gelatin dessert. Currant jelly was a common choice in American kitchens of the period and gives the sauce its tartness and colour.
- The hinge: wet the cornstarchMix the teaspoon of cornstarch with a tablespoon or so of cold water to a smooth cream before it goes near the hot pan. Dropped in dry it will seize into lumps that no amount of stirring will break up.
- The three-minute boilThis is not arbitrary. Cornstarch needs a genuine boil to reach full thickening power and to cook off the raw, chalky taste; stir constantly so the bottom does not scorch.
- ConsistencyOne teaspoon of starch to a cup of liquid gives a thin pouring sauce, not a pudding. It will thicken a little more as it cools. Use a scant two teaspoons if you want it to cling.
- SugarA single tablespoon assumes an already-sweet jelly. Taste after the jelly has dissolved and adjust before adding the starch, since sugar added later dilutes the thickening slightly.
- Yield and servingMakes about one cup, enough for four to six servings. Serve warm over doughnuts, cottage pudding, steamed puddings, bread pudding or plain cake; it also thins nicely with a spoonful of hot water if it stiffens on standing.
- ReheatingCornstarch sauces weep and thin if held too long or reheated hard. Warm gently and stir, and do not expect it to keep beyond a day in the refrigerator.
Sauces like this belong to the era when cornstarch became the ordinary household thickener, displacing the flour-and-butter roux and the arrowroot of earlier cookery for sweet purposes. Boxed cornstarch was widely marketed in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and by the time this book appeared a teaspoon of it stirred into fruit juice, jelly or milk was one common route to a pudding sauce in a kitchen without cream to spare. A plain fried cake, cheap and quickly made, was often dressed up for the table with a hot sweet sauce rather than a glaze. Currant jelly in particular seems to have done double duty in these books, appearing with roast meats and game as well as with cake, which is why so many household stores kept a tumbler of it on hand year round.