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Brandy Sauce
3 Tablespoons Cornstarch 1/2 Teaspoon Rice Flour Pinch of Salt 11/2 Tablespoons Butter 1 Pint Hot Water 1 Tablespoon Cornstarch 1/2 Cup Brown Sugar 1 Teaspoon Vanilla 11/4 Tablespoons Brandy Stir the cornstarch, flour and salt together, and blend with the butter. Stir in the hot water gradually, add the other ingredients, and cook, stirring constantly, five or six minutes. Add vanilla and brandy, remove from fire, and beat in a second tablespoon of butter.
A pourable cornstarch sauce for steamed or boiled puddings, thickened on the stovetop and finished off the heat. The ingredient list has picked up some printer's confusion that needs sorting before you start.
- The doubled cornstarchCornstarch appears twice, at 3 tablespoons and again at 1 tablespoon, and the method calls for it only once. Three tablespoons to a pint of water already gives a thick, spoon-coating sauce, so do not add the extra tablespoon of starch. Note also that the method asks for "a second tablespoon of butter" that the ingredient list does not account for, so the loose tablespoon may be a mis-set butter line rather than starch.
- Garbled fractions"11/2 Tablespoons Butter" and "11/4 Tablespoons Brandy" are 1 1/2 and 1 1/4 tablespoons. The brandy quantity is unusually precise for a period sauce; anything from 1 to 2 tablespoons works. The recipe adds it at the very end of cooking, immediately before the pan comes off the fire, so little of the alcohol is driven off.
- The rice flourHalf a teaspoon of rice flour in a pint of sauce does almost nothing structurally. Rice flour does turn up alongside other starches in period sauces, said to give a smoother, less gluey set. Leave it out if you have none.
- Blending the starch with butterRubbing the dry starch into the butter before the water goes in coats the granules so they disperse instead of clumping, which is why the hot water can be added directly without lumps.
- Cooking timeFive or six minutes of constant stirring is right. Cornstarch thickens quickly but tastes chalky if pulled too soon; it also thins again if boiled hard or stirred aggressively after it has set.
- The second tablespoon of butterBeating in butter off the heat is a finishing step, not thickening. It gives gloss and a rounder mouthfeel.
- Brown sugarPeriod brown sugar was moister and less refined than today's. Light brown sugar is the closer match; dark brown will push the sauce toward butterscotch, which is not unwelcome with a steamed fruit pudding.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 cups, enough for eight to ten servings of pudding. It keeps three or four days refrigerated and reheats gently, though it will need thinning with a little hot water.
Brandy sauce belongs to the long English tradition of serving a hot sweet sauce over boiled and steamed puddings, and it is the plainer cousin of hard sauce, where the brandy is beaten into butter and sugar and served cold. Cornstarch-thickened versions like this one spread through American cookbooks as commercial cornstarch, on sale from the 1840s, became a pantry staple over the course of the nineteenth century, offering housekeepers a sauce that did not curdle and did not require eggs or a double boiler. It calls for a small measure of rice flour alongside the cornstarch.