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Caramel Sauce
Put eight tablespoonfuls of white sugar into a saucepan upon the fire with two tablespoonfuls of water; stir it constantly with a wooden spoon for three or four minutes until all the water evaporates, and watch it carefully until it turns to a delicate brown color. In the meantime put into another saucepan twelve ounces of sugar, half the yellow rind of a lemon sliced thin, two inches of stick cinnamon and a quart of cold water; bring these gradually to the boil and let them simmer for ten minutes; add one wineglassful of wine or half the quantity of brandy. Strain the liquid into the caramel quickly, mix them together well, and serve the sauce with any pudding desired.
A thin, syrup-style caramel sauce of the sort that was ladled around a steamed or baked pudding rather than spooned over ice cream. Two pans work at once, and the moment they meet is the whole recipe.
- The hinge: combine while both are hotThe caramel must still be fluid and the spiced syrup must still be at a simmer when they are strained together. Pour the hot syrup into the caramel in a slow stream, standing back, since it will spit violently and can set the caramel into a hard sheet if added cold or too fast.
- Do not stir the caramel after it colorsThe instruction to stir constantly belongs to the first few minutes, while the water is still present. Once the syrup is clear and beginning to color, leave the spoon out and swirl the pan instead; stirring drags cooled sugar off the sides and encourages crystals.
- Quantities in modern termsEight tablespoons of sugar is half a cup; twelve ounces by weight is roughly 1 3/4 cups. A wineglassful is conventionally reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, so about 1/4 cup of wine or 2 tablespoons of brandy.
- Delicate brown means amberPull the caramel at a light amber; 'delicate brown' points to the paler end, somewhere around 340F if you are using a thermometer. Sugar goes from amber to acrid in well under a minute, and a scorched caramel will taint the entire quart of sauce.
- Lemon rindTake the yellow zest in wide strips with a peeler and leave the white pith behind, which turns bitter over a ten-minute simmer. Half a lemon's worth is right for this volume.
- Consistency and yieldAs written this makes close to a quart of sauce with the body of a thin syrup, enough for eight to ten servings. If you want something that coats a spoon, simmer the combined sauce down by a third to a half before serving; it thickens further as it cools.
- The wineA sweet fortified wine, madeira or sherry, suits it better than table wine. Added at the end of the simmer, most of the alcohol remains, which matters if you are serving children.
Oscar Tschirky, maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, published his Cook Book in 1896, and its dessert chapters reflect a moment when the boiled, baked and steamed pudding was still the standard American restaurant sweet. A pudding of that kind is dense and only mildly sweet on its own, so the kitchen kept a repertoire of pouring sauces to finish it: hard sauce, wine sauce, a custard, or a caramel like this one. The technique of burning sugar dry and then dissolving it in a flavored syrup was old by then, and the same burnt-sugar syrup did double duty in professional kitchens as a coloring for gravies, consommes and cakes.