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Simple Syrup Pudding Sauce
2 pounds of granulated sugar. 1 pint of water.
Boil them together in a clean, bright kettle, or new tin pan. Skim and strain for use.
The above is often used plain and unflavored as sauce for steamed pudding, pancakes, fritters, puddings of green fruit, etc.
A two-ingredient sugar syrup, boiled to a heavier density than the 1:1 simple syrup most bars use today. A few notes on the ratio and the pan.
- The ratioTwo pounds of sugar to one pint of water is roughly 2:1 by weight, which sets up as a thick, almost glossy syrup once cooled rather than a thin pouring sauce. Halving the sugar gives something closer to what modern cooks expect from "simple syrup."
- Boil timeThe original gives none. Bring it to a boil, hold it a minute or two until the sugar is fully dissolved and the liquid is clear, and stop. Prolonged boiling drives off water and pushes you toward thread stage and eventually caramel.
- "Clean, bright kettle, or new tin pan"The point is a clean, unscorched, unstained vessel, most likely to avoid discolouration and off flavours; how much the author meant by 'tin' specifically is not stated. Any heavy stainless or lined pan works; cast iron will discolour the syrup.
- Skimming and strainingNineteenth-century granulated sugar was less consistently refined than today's, and a scum could rise during boiling. Modern refined sugar throws very little, so skimming and straining are usually unnecessary.
- CrystallisationThis is close to a saturated syrup, so it may crystallise in the jar as it cools or over storage. Brushing the pan sides down with a wet brush while it heats, and adding a spoonful of corn syrup or a few drops of lemon juice, helps keep it fluid.
- FlavouringThe book presents it plain, but it takes flavour readily. Add vanilla, lemon or orange zest, brandy or a cinnamon stick off the heat, and strain before bottling.
- Yield and keepingRoughly four cups. Kept in a clean sealed jar in the refrigerator it keeps well at this sugar concentration.
Books of this kind tend to include a plain syrup early on because it is the base of half the kitchen's other work: it moistens cake layers, glazes fruit, thins fondant, sweetens fruit compotes and stands in for a sauce when nothing better is at hand. The listed uses here — steamed pudding, pancakes, fritters, puddings of green fruit — may point to a period when unripe or tart cooked fruit was common enough to need sweetening at the table rather than in the pot, though a single line of text can only suggest as much. A dense syrup of this sort can be diluted as needed, a habit still followed in confectionery, where heavy stock syrup is kept on hand and cut down for each application.