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Lemon Butter Sauce
1 quart of water. 1 pound of sugar. 2 ounces of corn starch. 2 ounces of butter. 2 lemons. 6 yolks of eggs.
Grate the rinds of both lemons into the water and squeeze in the juice of only one, unless quite small. That being the flavoring instead of nutmeg make the sauce in other respects as directed for the golden sauce preceding.
A cornstarch-and-yolk dessert sauce of the kind bakeries ladled over steamed and cottage puddings. The original leans on the "golden sauce" printed just before it, so the method has to be reconstructed: sugar and starch slaked into the water, boiled until clear, then finished off the heat with yolks and butter.
- The weights in cupsA quart is 4 cups; 1 lb sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; 2 oz cornstarch is a scant 1/2 cup (about 7 tablespoons); 2 oz butter is 4 tablespoons. This is a large batch, enough for a dozen or more pudding servings, and it halves cleanly.
- The hinge: yolks go in off the heatWhisk the six yolks with a ladleful of the hot thickened base, return the mixture to the pan away from the burner, and let residual heat set it. Brought back to a boil the yolks curdle and the sauce turns grainy; the starch has already done all the thickening it will do.
- Slake the starch coldWhisk the cornstarch with the sugar and a little of the cold water before the rest goes in. Cornstarch dumped into hot liquid lumps immediately, and 2 oz is enough to make a stubborn mass.
- Cook the starch outBring the base to a full boil and hold it a minute or two until it loses its chalky opacity and turns glossy. Undercooked cornstarch tastes raw and thins again on standing.
- Strain the rindGrated zest steeped in the water gives the flavour, but the shreds are unpleasant in a smooth sauce. Pour the base through a fine sieve before the yolks go in.
- Juice of one lemon onlyThe recipe grates both rinds into the water but takes the juice of one lemon only, "unless quite small"; the qualifier turns on the size of the lemons. The juice goes into the water at the start, along with the zest.
- "Instead of nutmeg"The wording implies the preceding golden sauce was flavoured with grated nutmeg; here lemon takes its place, so no spice is needed.
- Serving and holdingServe warm, not hot, over steamed puddings, cottage pudding or plain cake. It thickens as it cools; loosen with a little hot water rather than reheating hard, which risks breaking the yolks.
Sauces like this one belong to the era when almost every boiled, steamed or baked pudding arrived under a sweet sauce, often built as variations on a single formula. The pattern here is a common American one: water rather than milk, sugar, a starch to body it, butter for richness, and yolks for colour and a custard finish. That structure is why the recipe can be written in four lines and simply point back to the "golden sauce" preceding it. Cornstarch was manufactured commercially in the United States from the 1840s onward and was in wide use in such sauces by the end of the century. The note about using lemon "instead of nutmeg" indicates that nutmeg flavoured the preceding sauce and lemon is the variation.