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Sauce
1/2 Tablespoon Flour (Rice) 11/4 Tablespoons Cornstarch Pinch of Salt 1 Pint Scalded Milk 11/2 Squares Chocolate 3/4 Cup Sugar 2 Eggs 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Mix the cornstarch and flour, and make smooth with a little cold milk.
Cook in the scalded milk over water for 10 minutes. Melt the chocolate, add 1/4 cup sugar and turn into the thickened milk. Beat the whites of the eggs very stiff, add the rest of the sugar and the yolks of the eggs. Stir the hot mixture slowly into the eggs and return to double boiler and stand for a moment or two, but do not cook. Flavor and cool.
A chocolate sauce built like a thin cornstarch custard, meant to be poured over steamed or baked puddings. The hinge is the last step: the eggs go in off the heat and must not be allowed to set, or the sauce turns grainy.
- Squares of chocolateA square is one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, so this calls for 1.5 oz. Modern semi-sweet or dark bar chocolate will make the sauce noticeably sweeter and softer; if you substitute, cut the sugar back.
- Rice flour"Flour (Rice)" means rice flour, not wheat. Plain wheat flour can be substituted, and the full ten minutes of cooking specified will cook out its raw taste.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk to about 180F, when it steams and a ring of small bubbles forms at the edge. Scalding was originally a safety step for raw milk; with pasteurized milk it simply speeds the thickening.
- Cook over water"Over water" and "double boiler" mean the same vessel here. Direct heat will scorch the chocolate and set the starch unevenly.
- Tempering the eggsPour the hot milk into the beaten eggs in a slow stream while whisking, never the reverse. Returning it to the double boiler for "a moment or two" is meant to warm it through without curdling.
- Egg donenessThe sauce is never brought to a full custard temperature. If that matters to you, use pasteurized shell eggs, or bring the finished sauce to 160F while stirring and watch it closely, since it will thicken and can break past that point.
- Whites beaten stiffBeating the whites first and adding the yolks and sugar to them gives a lighter sauce than a plain stirred custard, though stirring in the hot mixture will knock some of the air out. Serve it soon after making.
- Yield and servingRoughly a pint and a half. The recipe ends "Flavor and cool," so it was meant to go on cool or lukewarm, over puddings or plain cake; refrigerate leftovers and use within two days.
Pudding sauces often occupy their own subsection in late-Victorian and Edwardian American cookbooks because the puddings themselves were deliberately plain -- bread, rice, cornstarch, steamed suet -- and the sauce carried the flavor and the expense. Chocolate had become cheap and reliable in the household kitchen by the turn of the century, sold in wrapped one-ounce squares of unsweetened cake chocolate, which is why so many recipes of this period count in "squares" rather than ounces. The technique here, a starch-bound milk base folded into beaten eggs off the heat, is a domestic shortcut to a stirred custard: the starch guarantees body so the cook does not have to bring eggs to the edge of curdling.