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Sauce for Ice Cream
2 Tablespoons Butter 2 Teaspoons Cornstarch 1/2 Cup Honey Cook together the cornstarch and butter thoroughly, being careful not to brown them. Add the honey and cook the mixture until it becomes hard when dropped into cold water and until all taste of raw cornstarch has been removed.
A three-ingredient honey caramel meant to be poured hot over cold ice cream, where it stiffens into a chewy shell. The whole trick is in the cold-water test.
- The hinge: the cold-water testDropping a little syrup into cold water and finding it hard rather than soft is the recipe's own doneness cue; in candy terms that points somewhere in the firm- to hard-ball range, very roughly 245-265F. Below that the sauce stays runny on the ice cream; much above it and honey darkens fast.
- Honey burns before sugar doesHoney's fructose darkens at a lower temperature than granulated sugar, so keep the heat moderate and stir steadily near the end. A candy thermometer is more reliable here than eye or ear.
- Cook the starch first, without colourTwo tablespoons butter and two teaspoons cornstarch make a very pale roux. Keep it on low heat and stop while it is still smooth and uncoloured; the recipe explicitly warns against browning, which would muddy the honey flavour.
- Raw starch tasteThe instruction to cook until no raw cornstarch taste remains is the real doneness cue alongside the water test. Starch needs a few minutes of active heat after the honey goes in; taste a cooled drop off a spoon.
- Use a small heavy panThis is a half-cup of syrup. In a wide pan it will scorch in seconds; a small saucepan with a thick base gives you a margin of control.
- Yield and servingA modest half cup or so once cooked down. Pour it warm; if it sets in the pan, rewarm gently rather than reheating it hard.
Pudding-sauce chapters in household cookbooks of the early twentieth century lean heavily on things a new cook could make from the pantry shelf. Honey served here as both sweetener and syrup, a useful role in the years when wartime sugar conservation campaigns pushed American home cooks toward honey, molasses and corn syrup as substitutes. The cornstarch-and-butter base is the same thickening logic used across the era's dessert sauces -- a starch cooked in fat to keep it from lumping -- while the cold-water test for doneness is borrowed straight from candy making, which household manuals of the period commonly taught before thermometers were common in kitchens. The result belongs to the same family as the hot fudge and butterscotch sauces of the period: a hot syrup that hardens on contact with cold cream.