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Chaudeau Sauce
Put the yolks of eight and the whites of two eggs into a lined saucepan with the strained juice of half a lemon, one-fourth pound each of lemon sugar and loaf sugar, and one quart of chablis, and whisk this over a slow fire until a light froth is formed. When the sauce is on the point of boiling, remove the saucepan from the fire, beat the sauce a few minutes longer, and serve it.
A warm wine froth in the sabayon family, meant to be poured over steamed puddings and soufflés. Everything depends on keeping it below the boil.
- The hinge: heat controlEgg yolk begins to thicken around 160F, though the sugar and the large quantity of wine push that threshold higher; the sauce is held short of the boil. Oscar's "slow fire" is safer as a bowl over barely simmering water, whisked constantly; the instant it thickens and froths, pull it off, because a boil will curdle it.
- Lemon sugarSugar rubbed or pounded with lemon zest until it takes on the oil -- a common nineteenth-century flavouring. Rub the zest of one or two lemons into the sugar with your fingers and let it stand an hour.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in hard cones and broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent. A quarter pound of each is about half a cup, so roughly one cup of sugar total.
- Lined saucepanIn a hotel kitchen of this date this would most likely have meant tin-lined copper, keeping the acid of the wine and lemon off bare metal. Stainless steel or a glass bowl does the same job; avoid unlined aluminium or cast iron, which can grey the sauce.
- ChablisA quart is four cups — a great deal of wine for eight yolks, and it produces a thin, pourable, distinctly boozy sauce rather than a thick custard. Any dry, unoaked white works; skip anything sweet, as the sugar is already generous.
- WhitesThe two whites most likely serve to lighten the froth. The recipe has them whisked in with the yolks from the start rather than folded in separately.
- Yield and servingClose to a quart and a half of sauce, enough for a dozen or more portions. It should go to the table at once; a chaudeau begins to collapse soon after it leaves the heat and does not reheat well.
Chaudeau — from the French chaud eau, "hot water" — was the name used in German and Austrian kitchens for a warm frothed wine sauce served over puddings. It belongs to the same family as Italian zabaglione and French sabayon: yolks, sugar and wine beaten over gentle heat until they hold air. Oscar Tschirky's inclusion of it among the Waldorf's sauces reflects the hotel's Continental repertoire at the turn of the century, when a steamed or cabinet pudding was expected to arrive under something more elegant than cream. The specification of a lined pan and a slow fire may suggest a professional kitchen working over coal ranges, where the cook controlled heat by moving the pan rather than turning a dial.