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Lemon Butter Sauce
Put one tablespoonful of corn starch and two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar into a saucepan; grate in the rind of one lemon, and then stir in one-half pint of boiling water, the juice of half a lemon, and a small piece of butter; add by degrees the beaten yolks of two eggs, stirring it over the fire for a minute or so, using care to see that the eggs do not curdle. This sauce can be served with puddings, or, with the whipped white of an egg added, can be used to fill paste-lined patty-pans for tarts or cheese cakes.
A thin lemon dessert sauce built on cornstarch and enriched with yolks at the end. The whole thing hinges on the final minute: the yolks must be tempered and the sauce kept below a simmer, or you get scrambled egg in lemon syrup.
- Half a pintOne cup of boiling water. The finished sauce comes to a little over a cup, enough for four to six pudding servings.
- Powdered sugarIn 1896 this meant sugar ground fine, roughly what we sell as caster or superfine sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will make the sauce cloudier and slightly thicker; granulated dissolves perfectly well in boiling water here.
- A small piece of butterRead this as about a tablespoon. It is there for gloss and softness, not structure, so the amount is forgiving.
- Tempering the yolksThe recipe has you add the beaten yolks to the pan "by degrees," a little at a time with constant stirring. If you prefer, beat the yolks in a bowl, whisk in several spoonfuls of the hot starch mixture one at a time, then return everything to the pan. Either way the yolks should not meet boiling liquid all at once.
- The finishing heatCook over low heat, stirring constantly, only until the sauce thickens and coats the spoon, around 170F. Yolks begin to set well below boiling, though the cornstarch here offers some protection; take the pan off once the sauce thickens rather than letting it boil hard.
- Grating the rindGrate the zest directly into the dry cornstarch and sugar as written; the starch catches the oils. Take only the yellow, since white pith turns the sauce bitter.
- One tablespoon of starchThat gives a pourable sauce, correct for pudding. For the tart filling in the second half of the recipe the beaten white is the only change the text calls for; if you want a filling that holds a cut you may need more cornstarch, and the filled shells will need baking until the surface is set.
- ServingBest warm, poured over steamed or baked puddings. It thickens noticeably as it cools and will need a splash of hot water and a whisk if reheated.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his Cook Book in 1896, and its dessert chapters lean heavily on the English pudding repertoire that still dominated American hotel menus. A cornstarch-and-lemon sauce like this is often said to have been a common accompaniment to steamed, boiled and cabinet puddings, where an earlier cook might have served a wine sauce or a true custard. The dual use suggested at the end of the recipe — sauce today, tart filling tomorrow with a beaten white folded in — points to the same lineage as lemon curd and the "cheese cakes" of British curd-tart tradition, a name that persisted whatever the filling. Cornstarch itself was a relatively new convenience, manufactured in quantity in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and cookbooks of Oscar's generation used it freely wherever an earlier cook would have reached for more eggs or a flour-and-butter roux.