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Orange Sauce
Cream five tablespoons of butter and a cup of granulated sugar. Put these into a saucepan and pour over them one-half cup of boiling water, then the stiffly beaten whites of three eggs, the juice of two oranges and half a lemon. Beat until light and foamy.
This is a foamy pudding sauce of the type meant to be spooned over a hot steamed or baked pudding. As printed it never cooks the egg whites, and the arithmetic of the recipe makes that unfixable by ordinary care.
- No cooking step is givenThe saucepan is called for, but the recipe never puts it over heat. Butter, sugar, boiling water, whites and citrus juice are simply combined and beaten, so the whites are pasteurised by nothing but half a cup of water.
- The temperature does not get thereHalf a cup of boiling water poured over creamed butter and sugar at room temperature, then whisked with three cold egg whites and the juice of two oranges and half a lemon, lands well under 140F almost immediately and keeps falling as it is beaten. Egg white needs sustained heat, not a brief splash of it.
- Whites are not a safe exceptionRaw egg white can carry Salmonella, and a sauce like this sits at room temperature on the table through a meal, which is the range where any contamination multiplies fastest.
- Aeration works against youBeating until light and foamy folds in air and increases surface area, which sheds what little heat the boiling water contributed. The dish is designed, unintentionally, to cool fast.
- Reading the vesselThe mention of a saucepan is worth noting for what it implies: many period foamy sauces were finished over hot water and beaten until thickened. This one omits that instruction entirely, and the omission is the whole problem.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe for a cooked foamy or orange pudding sauce, one that specifies heating the egg mixture and gives a temperature.
Foamy sauces — butter and sugar beaten to a froth with egg, sometimes with wine, sometimes with fruit juice — were the standard dressing for the plain steamed and baked puddings that fill this section of the Butterick book, published by the pattern company as part of its broader household-advice business for the middle-class American housekeeper of the early twentieth century. This version leans on two oranges and half a lemon. The recipe does not say to beat the sauce over hot water until it thickened, though that is how a foamy sauce is made.