Home › Puddings and Pudding Sauces › Vanilla Sauce
Vanilla Sauce
1 Cup Boiling Water 1 Cup Honey or Maple Syrup 1 Tablespoon Corn Starch 1 Tablespoon Butter 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Mix cornstarch with a little cold water; add gradually to the boiling water. Cook 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add vanilla and butter after removing from fire.
A clear, translucent pudding sauce thickened with cornstarch rather than eggs or cream. The ingredient list is complete but the method skips a step, so read the points before starting.
- The missing instructionThe honey or maple syrup is never mentioned in the method. Add it to the boiling water along with the cornstarch slurry so it has time to dissolve and thin out; stirred in at the end it stays stringy and sinks.
- Slurry first, alwaysCornstarch dropped dry into hot liquid seizes into lumps that never disperse. Mix the tablespoon with about two tablespoons of cold water until smooth, then pour it into the boiling liquid in a thin stream while stirring.
- Five minutes is not too longCornstarch reaches full thickness at a boil and then needs a minute or two more to cook off the raw, chalky taste. Keep it at a lazy bubble and keep stirring; the sauce will look cloudy at first and turn glossy when it is done.
- Butter and vanilla off the heatThe original does state this, and it matters. Vanilla extract is alcohol-based and its aroma flashes off in a boiling pan, and butter beaten in off the heat gives the sauce its shine.
- Honey or maple are not interchangeable in flavourA cup of honey makes a heavy, floral sauce that can overwhelm a plain pudding; maple syrup is thinner and less sweet by volume. If you use honey, a dark buckwheat or chestnut honey will fight the vanilla, so choose a mild clover type.
- Yield and servingMakes about two cups, enough for six to eight servings poured over steamed pudding, cottage pudding, bread pudding or gingerbread. Serve warm; it thickens further as it cools and will be noticeably thicker straight from the refrigerator.
- ReheatingCornstarch sauces thin and turn watery if boiled a second time. Warm it gently over low heat or in a bowl set over hot water, whisking to bring it back together.
Vanilla sauce of this kind belongs to a large family of American "pudding sauces" that stood in for custard when eggs and cream were expensive or scarce: water, a sweetener, a starch, a lump of butter and a flavouring. Cornstarch had been manufactured in the United States since the middle of the nineteenth century and by the early twentieth was a common household thickener, cheap and reliable in a way that egg custard is not. The choice of honey or maple syrup rather than white sugar is worth noticing; sweetener substitutions of this sort are often associated with periods when refined sugar was restricted or dearer than what a household could get locally, though nothing in the recipe itself fixes a date or an occasion.