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Matrimony Sauce
Put a bit of butter into cold water in a saucepan, dust in a little flour, stirring one way till they are completely mixed; then add some brown sugar and a tablespoonful or so of vinegar; continue stirring till it boils; pour into a sauce dish and serve with your dumplings.
A sweet-sour pudding sauce built on a cold-water slurry rather than a cooked roux. The original gives no quantities at all, so the proportions below are a starting point rather than a conversion.
- Working proportionsFor about a cup of sauce: 1 tablespoon butter, 1 cup cold water, 1 tablespoon flour, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1 tablespoon vinegar. Adjust the sugar and vinegar at the end, since the whole point of the sauce is the balance between them.
- The hinge: everything cold at the startThe flour goes into cold water, not hot, which is why this works without lump-hunting. If the pan is already warm the flour will seize before it disperses. Mix to a smooth thin liquid off the heat, then set it over moderate heat.
- "Stirring one way"A common nineteenth-century instruction, part practical and part superstition. Consistent stirring does keep the flour in suspension; the direction makes no difference.
- How long to boilBring it to a boil and hold it there a minute or two. Flour-thickened sauces taste pasty if pulled off the moment they thicken, and the starch needs the boil to lose its raw edge.
- VinegarCider or plain white vinegar suits it. Vinegar strengths vary, and the original only asks for 'a tablespoonful or so,' so start with less than a full tablespoon and taste.
- Brown sugarBrown sugar of the period was generally less refined than modern light brown, and often moister and stronger in flavour. Dark brown sugar or a spoonful of molasses stirred into white sugar gets closer to that depth.
- Consistency and yieldAim for something that coats a spoon and pools around a dumpling, not a gravy. The proportions above should be enough for roughly four servings; it thickens noticeably as it cools, so thin with a little hot water if it stiffens in the dish.
- The dumplings"Your dumplings" is left undefined. Boiled or steamed suet or biscuit dumplings served as a pudding are the obvious candidates, though sauces of this sweet-sour type were also poured over fruit dumplings.
The name presumably plays on the sauce being sweet and sour at once, poured over the plainest of puddings. Sweet-sour pudding sauces of this type appear in British and North American household cookery, where a little butter, flour, sugar and vinegar could be had at any season and needed no eggs, cream or fresh fruit. The quantities are left entirely to the cook's judgement. The Home Cook Book itself is generally traced to a Chicago compilation of the mid-1870s, reworked and reissued in Toronto as a charity fundraiser.