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Wine Sauce for Puddings

2 pounds of granulated sugar. 1 teacupful of water, 1 pint of wine. 1 dozen whole cloves. 1/2 a lemon. 1 blade of mace.

Melt the sugar in the cup of water on the fire taking care it does not burn while dissolving. Throw in the spices and the lemon cut in bits--the seeds excluded--and let simmer to draw the flavors. Remove from the fire and add the wine, then strain. It should not boil after the wine is added. The foregoing is not quite a simple matter, or one for set instructions. Color is desirable in most cases and the wine is not always sufficient. Then artificial means must be employed. The wines of California are, happily, coming into use cheap enough for such purposes as these, and with the probabilities in favor of their purity. They are not always of desirable color. Burnt sugar caramel will make your sauce sherry or madeira color. Carmine, which is the coloring principal of cochineal, will make a handsome claret color, provided there be lemon juice or any acid in the sauce, otherwise it is apt to make an unpleasant purple. Caramel and carmine mixed make port wine color; but let the tints be weak rather than be overdone. Pudding sauces could perhaps be classified in four divisions, but they ought not, because it may almost be said the more unmethodical our methods in this line can be the better. Not of course, the methods of making sauces, but of their application. This matter, almost inexplicable, it will be our task to talk at and around about in a succeeding column.

The sauces at present touched upon it will be observed have had nothing in them to give body to their linked sweetness but pure sugar and for richness only wine. So when more wine is used or when fruit or fruit juice instead, more sugar has to be added for thickening for sweetened water or liquor is not desirable for anything but a French beverage. They tell of a notable Frenchman who was so delighted when loaf sugar was first made that he declared when the price got down to two francs per pound he would drink nothing but sugar-and water. Surely soda-fountains and raspberry and pineapple syrups had never then been thought of else why such a homely fancy?