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Lemon Sauce (Boil one cup sugar and one cup)
Boil one cup sugar and one cup water together fifteen minutes, then remove; when cooled a little, add one-half teaspoon extract lemon and one tablespoon lemon juice.
A plain boiled sugar syrup finished with lemon, meant to be spooned over steamed and baked puddings. The only real variable is how far you cook the syrup.
- Fifteen minutes is a stage, not a clockOne cup sugar to one cup water boiled for a quarter hour reduces to a light syrup, somewhere short of or around thread stage depending on the pan. If your pan is wide it will get there faster and can turn candy-thick; watch the syrup rather than the timer and pull it when it coats a spoon thinly.
- Add the lemon off the heatBoth the extract and the juice are added after cooling a little, and that is deliberate. Alcohol-based extract flashes off in a hot syrup and fresh juice loses its edge, so let the pan sit five minutes before stirring them in.
- Extract and juice togetherThe extract carries the perfume of the peel, the juice supplies the acid. One tablespoon of juice in a cup of syrup is restrained; up to two is reasonable if you want the sauce to cut a rich pudding.
- Yield and servingThis makes about one cup, enough for six to eight servings ladled over pudding. Serve warm; it thickens noticeably as it cools and can be loosened with a spoonful of hot water.
- If it crystallizesBoiled syrups grain if sugar crystals cling to the pan sides. Brush them down with a wet pastry brush during cooking, or add a pinch of cream of tartar at the start, and do not stir once it comes to a boil.
- A thicker versionSome period lemon sauce recipes are thickened with cornstarch and enriched with butter. This one does neither, so expect a clear, pourable syrup rather than an opaque sauce.
Lemon sauce belongs to the long line of sweet pudding sauces that were the standard finish for cottage pudding, steamed suet puddings and plain cake in nineteenth and early twentieth century American kitchens. Such formulas recommended themselves because they are cheap, need no eggs or cream, and rescue an ordinary baked pudding. The recipe leans on bottled lemon extract alongside a single spoonful of fresh juice, a combination that would have been unremarkable on the era's grocery shelf.