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Molasses Sauce
1 Cup Molasses or Syrup 1 Tablespoon Cornstarch, stirred smooth with water 1 Tablespoon Butter Substitute 1/4 Teaspoon Cinnamon Pinch of Salt Lemon Juice or Vinegar to Taste Boil all ingredients together 20 minutes. Hot molasses flavored with ground ginger makes an excellent sauce.
A thickened molasses pudding sauce of the wartime type, built to work without cream or much sugar. The list is short but two of its instructions need translating.
- Butter substituteThe phrase points to oleomargarine or a vegetable shortening, both promoted heavily when butter was rationed or dear. A tablespoon of butter works perfectly well here; the substitution was economic, not culinary.
- Boil 20 minutes is too longCornstarch reaches full thickening power within a minute or two of boiling and breaks down with prolonged agitated boiling, and molasses scorches readily. Bring the mixture to a simmer, stir until it thickens and turns glossy, then hold it a few minutes at most.
- Slurry firstThe cornstarch is stirred smooth in a little water before it meets the hot molasses, exactly as written (cold water is the usual practice). Added dry it will tend to seize into lumps that whisking will not fully clear.
- Molasses or syrupAny dark cane molasses suits this; blackstrap is aggressively bitter and better avoided. Golden syrup, cane syrup or sorghum all stand in, though each shifts the flavour noticeably.
- The acidLemon juice or vinegar is not a garnish here, it cuts the flat sweetness of boiled molasses. Start with a teaspoon, taste, and add more once the sauce is off the heat.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup of sauce, enough for four to six servings of steamed pudding, gingerbread, cottage pudding or plain bread pudding. It thickens further as it cools, so thin it with a spoonful of hot water if it stiffens past pouring.
- The ginger variantThe closing line is a separate, simpler sauce: warmed molasses with ground ginger stirred in, no thickener at all. Useful when you want something pourable in two minutes.
Molasses sauce belongs to the long American tradition of sweetening from cane syrup rather than refined sugar, which was for generations the cheaper and more available option, particularly in rural households. The appearance of a "butter substitute" in the ingredient list suggests a period of butter economy -- such terms recur in American cookbooks and government conservation literature from the First World War through the Second, when conservation of butter, wheat and refined sugar was urged and molasses was promoted as a substitute sweetener. A pudding sauce needing no cream, no eggs and no butter fitted that brief exactly. The instruction to finish with lemon juice or vinegar reflects an older palate that expected a sharp note against heavy sweetness, a habit visible throughout nineteenth-century pudding sauces.