Common Wine Sauce

A pudding sauce built on the Victorian foundation sauce called "melted butter" — which is not simply butter melted in a pan. Getting that base right is the whole job.

• What "melted butter" meansIn British cookery of this period it is a white sauce: butter thickened with a little flour and water or milk, cooked out and beaten smooth, roughly the consistency of pouring cream. Plain melted butter, having nothing to bind it, is liable to separate once the wine is added.
• "Make thin"The base is deliberately loosened before the liquor is added, since the sherry and brandy will thin it further. Aim for a base slightly thicker than you want the finished sauce, then let the wine bring it down.
• A glass of sherryA wine glass in mid-Victorian recipe books is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though the measure was not standardised; on that basis half a glass of brandy is about 1 fl oz. That is a strong sauce by modern taste; start with two-thirds of the brandy and adjust.
• Lump sugar, coarsely poundedLoaf or lump sugar broken down with a rolling pin. Ordinary granulated or caster sugar is the direct substitute — one to two tablespoons for a few ounces of sauce, so the sauce is only lightly sweet.
• Heat after the wine goes inWarm it through gently and do not let it boil. A boil drives off the spirit that the sauce exists to deliver, and can break the emulsion. If the sauce does separate, whisk in a spoonful of cold water off the heat.
• Lemon peel and nutmegGrate the zest of no more than a quarter of a lemon, and add it at the end so the oils stay bright. Nutmeg wants grating fresh; the pre-ground tin gives a flat, dusty note in a sauce this simple.
• Yield and serving"A few ounces" of base plus the liquor makes about a cup — enough for four to six servings of a steamed or baked pudding. Serve hot, poured at the table, alongside plum pudding, roly-poly, baked apple pudding or a plain sponge.