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Wine Dressing
Mix one-half cup sugar, one-third cup Sherry wine, and two tablespoons Madeira.
A three-ingredient pouring sauce for cold puddings, meant to be stirred until the sugar dissolves and spooned over at the table. It is uncooked, so everything depends on the wine and on getting the sugar into solution.
- YieldRoughly two-thirds of a cup once the sugar is in solution, enough to dress four to six servings of a cold pudding, steamed pudding turned out cold, or fruit.
- Dissolve the sugar properlyHalf a cup of granulated sugar takes persistent stirring to dissolve in the scant half-cup of wine here. Stir over several minutes, or use superfine sugar, which goes into cold liquid more readily. Grittiness is the usual failure here.
- What Sherry meantRecipes of this period seldom specify a style, and a sweeter Sherry than the dry Fino most shops now sell first is the likelier intention. A dry Sherry gives a sharper, less rounded sauce.
- MadeiraThe two tablespoons are for aroma rather than bulk. A Bual or Malmsey adds the raisiny note the recipe is after; Sercial is bone-dry and will read as thin. Supermarket "Madeira wine" with added salt, sold for cooking, should be avoided in an uncooked sauce.
- It is not cookedNo heat is applied, so the alcohol stays. The sauce is noticeably boozy and should be treated accordingly at the table.
- KeepingFortified wine and sugar keep well. Made ahead and refrigerated in a covered jar, it holds a week or more; stir before serving as sugar may settle.
- How it was usedPoured, not spread. It suits cold cabinet puddings, blancmange, plain sponge, baked custards served cold, and fresh or poached fruit.
Wine sauces of this kind sit at the plain end of a long line of British and American pudding dressings, of which hard sauce and foamy egg sauces are the richer cousins. Sherry and Madeira were familiar in the New England store cupboard: Madeira in particular reached American ports in quantity through the eighteenth-century Atlantic trade, and the island's fortified wines were prized partly because they survived long sea voyages, and were generally said to improve for them. By the time such household repertoires were codified in print, a bottle of each was assumed equipment rather than a luxury, which is why a recipe this slight was worth printing at all.