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Creamy Sauce II
Use same proportions as given in recipe I. If not careful in adding liquids, it will curdle; but this will make no in adding liquids, it will curdle; but this will make no difference, as the sauce is to be warmed over hot water. By careful watching and constant stirring, the ingredients will be perfectly blended; it should be creamy in consistency. 1/2 cup butter Foamy Sauce I 1 cup powdered sugar 1 egg 2 tablespoons wine Cream the butter, add gradually sugar, egg well beaten, and wine; beat while heating over hot water.
The text as printed has collapsed two entries together: the note for Creamy Sauce II (which just refers back to Recipe I) runs straight into the ingredient list and method for Foamy Sauce I. The workable recipe is the second half — butter, sugar, egg and wine beaten over hot water.
- The garbled linesThe duplicated phrase "in adding liquids, it will curdle; but this will make no" is a typesetting slip, not an instruction. Read it once and move on.
- Powdered sugarIn period usage "powdered sugar" means a fine granulated sugar rather than modern confectioners' sugar. Caster or superfine sugar is the closest match; confectioners' sugar will work but brings cornstarch with it and gives a slightly pastier body.
- WineTwo tablespoons. A fortified wine such as sherry or Madeira is the usual choice for sauces of this kind; a dry table wine is thinner and more acidic and likelier to make the sauce separate.
- Hot water, not boilingThis is the hinge. Set the bowl over water held just below a simmer and keep the whisk moving. If the water boils, the single egg scrambles and no amount of beating will bring the sauce back.
- Curdling is recoverableThe author's reassurance is sound: a sauce that looks broken when the wine goes in will usually re-emulsify with steady heat and constant beating. Add the wine in a thin stream rather than all at once and there is less to fix.
- Egg temperatureWith one whole egg in the mixture, beat until it reaches 160F on an instant-read thermometer — the sauce will have thickened and lightened by then. Under-heated, it is essentially a raw-egg sauce.
- Yield and servingRoughly a cup and a half, depending how much air is beaten in; enough for several portions of a steamed or baked pudding. Serve at once, warm; it deflates and separates on standing.
Sauces like this belong to the long English tradition of pudding sauces served with boiled, steamed and baked puddings — the family that includes hard sauce (butter and sugar creamed cold), foamy sauce (the same enriched with egg and beaten hot) and creamy sauce. Nineteenth-century American cookbooks tend to give a whole run of them together, because a plain suet, bread or cottage pudding was expected to arrive with something rich poured over it; the pudding was cheap, the sauce was where the butter, sugar and wine went. The wine in these sauces is a holdover from nineteenth-century American home cooking, when sherry and Madeira sat in the store closet as flavourings alongside rose water and vanilla.