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Maraschino Sauce
Sauce au Marasquin.
Maraschino is made by steeping black cherry seeds in proof spirit a long time, and adding to the flavored spirit three times as much simple syrup. It is clear and colorless for a substitute make the simple syrup with the juice of canned white cherries--a pint to two pounds. Strain, flavor slightly with peach or almond extract, and add a quarter pint of gin. Excellent for steamed puddings, rice and farina cakes and fried cream fritters. As long as butter and honey, silver drips and maple syrup are applied in such lavish proportions to hotel waffles, hot breads and cakes as is the present custom there will be no reason to make excuse for the excessive sweetness of these clear syrup sauces. Rich as they are they can go a degree higher for such things as sponge puddings and boiled puddings of flour.
This is really two things at once: a note on what maraschino liqueur is, and a workable substitute syrup for a kitchen that had none. The instructions to follow are the substitute.
- The ratio, decoded"A pint to two pounds" means one pint of cherry juice to two pounds of sugar — about 2 cups juice to 4 1/2 cups granulated sugar. That is a heavy syrup by any standard; if your canned cherries are packed in syrup rather than water, cut the sugar by a third or the sauce will set up like candy.
- A quarter pintHalf a cup. Old American pastry books count in gills and quarter-pints: a gill is half a cup, a quarter pint is the same thing. The gin is there for the juniper-and-spirit bite that stands in for the liqueur, and it stays raw — do not boil it off.
- Canned white cherriesHe means the pale sweet cherries of the Royal Anne (Napoleon) type, the sort sold canned in the period; Rainier, often suggested as the modern white cherry, is a twentieth-century variety. A jar of good sour-cherry juice will work, though the sauce will be pink rather than the clear, colorless liquid he is imitating.
- Don't boil the seedsThe opening sentence describes how the commercial liqueur was made — it is not an instruction. Cherry and apricot kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide, and steeping crushed pits at home is not a project worth attempting. Bottled maraschino, or the almond extract he suggests, gets you the same flavor.
- Almond extract, lightly"Flavor slightly" is the operative word. Modern almond extract is strong; start with 1/4 teaspoon in the full batch and taste. Peach extract, if you can find it, is the other flavouring he offers.
- Keeping it clearDissolve the sugar over low heat without stirring once it comes up, and skim rather than agitate. A tablespoon of glucose or corn syrup, or a squeeze of lemon, will keep a syrup this dense from crystallizing in the jar.
- Yield and keepingA pint of juice with two pounds of sugar and half a cup of gin makes rather more than a quart. With that much sugar and the spirit added, it holds several weeks refrigerated in a clean jar; serve it warm or at room temperature, a couple of tablespoons over each portion.
- If you have the liqueurReal maraschino is available again. Half a cup stirred into a plain simple syrup — 1 cup sugar to 1 cup water — gives a maraschino sauce with less trouble, though it will be much thinner and less sweet than the syrup described here.
Maraschino takes its name from the marasca, a small dark sour cherry grown along the Dalmatian coast; the liqueur is generally traced to Zadar, in present-day Croatia, where distillers macerated the fruit together with its crushed stones to get the bitter-almond edge that distinguishes it from ordinary cherry brandy. By the time this book was written it was an expensive imported bottle, which may well explain the substitute: a kitchen wanting a clear, sweet, almond-scented sauce in quantity would have found gin plus a little extract far cheaper than Dalmatian liqueur. The closing paragraph is worth reading as period commentary rather than instruction " the author is defending the sheer sweetness of these clear syrup sauces by pointing at the butter, honey and maple syrup already being poured over hotel waffles and hot breads, and concluding that a heavy sauce for a steamed pudding needs no apology.