Wine Sauce
Substitute for the clear syrup and many other flavored sauces. Takes only half the amount of sugar. 1 pound of sugar. 2 ounces of corn starch. 1 quart of water--scant. 1 lemon. 1 ounce of butter. A blade of mace and few cloves. 1/2 pint of wine. Boil the water with the lemon sliced small in it--the seeds having been carefully excluded. Mix the starch in the sugar dry; then stir them quickly into the boiling lemon water and let boil 5 minutes. Then beat in the butter and add the wine. Strain for use.
A hotel-scale dessert sauce built on a cornstarch base rather than a boiled sugar syrup, which is why it needs only half the usual sugar. The measurements are by weight, as a bakeshop would have worked.
- The quantities in cups1 pound sugar is about 2¼ cups; 2 ounces cornstarch is a scant ½ cup; ½ pint wine is 1 cup. "A quart--scant" means just under 4 cups.
- Mix the starch into the sugar dryThis is the hinge of the recipe. The dry sugar separates the starch grains so they disperse without lumping when they hit boiling water. Skip it and you get a strained-out pan of paste.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg, sold in whole "blades" a century ago and now mostly ground. One blade is roughly ¼ to ½ teaspoon of ground mace, but ground spice will not strain out cleanly, so tie it and the cloves in a small cloth if you want the sauce clear.
- Add the wine off the heatAdd the wine last -- The instruction to beat in butter and add wine after the five-minute boil keeps the wine from being boiled, which would drive off the aroma the sauce is named for. A medium sherry, Madeira or Marsala suits this well, though the recipe specifies only "wine."
- Don't overboil the starchFive minutes is enough to cook out the raw taste and set the gel. The lemon acid is already in the water, and prolonged boiling in acid breaks cornstarch down, thinning the sauce as it cools.
- StrainingPass it through a fine sieve while hot, both for the spices and lemon debris and to catch any starch knots. It will thicken further as it cools and can be let down with a little hot water.
- YieldAbout 1½ quarts, enough for twenty or more servings over pudding, dumplings or cake. Halve or quarter it for a household.
Wine sauce was the standard finish for steamed and boiled puddings through the nineteenth century. What makes this version characteristic of a working bakeshop is its opening line: it is offered as a substitute for clear syrup, cheaper in sugar and stretched with cornstarch, which is generally said to have become widely available in American kitchens after the mid-1800s. The blade of mace and the few cloves belong to an older, heavier spicing tradition carried over from English pudding sauces, and the fortified wine assumed here is sherry or Madeira rather than anything dry.