White Sauce
Silver Sauce. Sauce au Vin Blano. 1 pound of powdered sugar. 8 ounces of butter, (large cup). 1/3 cupful hot water. 1/3 cupful of brandy, or else nearly 1/2 pint of wine and no water. Warm the butter slightly in a bright pan, put the sugar with it and cream them by rubbing together as if for cake. Then set it on the range and while beating with an egg-whisk in one hand pour in the brandy and water or wine with the other. When hot enough to serve it is ready. It must not boil, as that destroys its silvery whiteness and makes a gray syrup of it. Takes but a few minutes and should be made last thing. Good for souffle puddings of fruit, drop dumplings and boiled puddings.
A creamed butter-and-sugar sauce loosened with spirits over gentle heat — essentially hard sauce taken to the point of pouring. The whole recipe hinges on one negative instruction.
- Never let it boilOnce it simmers, the emulsion of butter, sugar and liquid breaks and you get a thin gray syrup instead of an opaque white sauce. Keep it over low heat or a pan of hot water, whisk constantly, and pull it the moment it is hot to the touch.
- "Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn American cookbooks of this period powdered sugar meant granulated sugar ground fine, with no starch in it. Modern confectioners' sugar carries cornstarch, which will dull the sauce and can turn it pasty; superfine or caster sugar is the closer match.
- Quantities in cupsA pound of sugar is roughly 2 1/4 cups; 8 ounces of butter is two sticks. A cupful here is 8 fluid ounces, so 1/3 cupful is a scant 3 ounces, and "nearly 1/2 pint" of wine is about 7 to 8 fluid ounces.
- A "bright pan"The instruction most likely means a clean, untarnished tinned or copper pan. In practice use stainless steel or enamel rather than bare cast iron or unlined aluminum, which really can dull the color.
- Brandy or wine, not both patterns interchangeablyBrandy or wine, not both -- The brandy version is cut with an equal amount of hot water, 1/3 cupful of each; the wine version replaces the water entirely. The recipe names no particular wine, but a dry one will read sour against this much sugar.
- The alcohol stays inBecause the sauce is never boiled, little of the spirit cooks off. It is noticeably alcoholic — worth knowing before serving it to children or anyone avoiding drink.
- Yield and servingAbout 3 cups, enough for twelve or more portions; it is very sweet and a couple of tablespoons per serving is plenty. Halve it for a household dessert, and make it while the pudding is turning out, as it will not hold or reheat well.
The heading gathers two names for the same thing — Silver Sauce and the French sauce au vin blanc (misprinted "Blano") — which tells you how loosely pastry-cooks' terminology traveled between English and French kitchens in the late nineteenth century. The sauce belongs to the family of sweet butter sauces that ran alongside boiled and steamed puddings in Anglo-American cooking: hard sauce served cold and firm, this one warmed and beaten to a pouring cream. The "silver" name refers only to the appearance, and the recipe notes only that boiling destroys the whiteness, without explaining why. Its character is nonetheless plain: a sauce made in five minutes at the last moment, from cheap staples, that dresses up a plain boiled pudding for the dining room.