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Pudding Sauce
Anonymous.
One cup of butter, one cup of milk, one cup of suga three eggs, flavour to taste.
Four ingredients, no method, no quantities of flavouring — typical of a contributed recipe written down for cooks who already knew what a pudding sauce was. What follows is what the list implies.
- What this actually isButter, sugar, milk and eggs in equal-ish measure make a rich stirred sauce, poured warm over a steamed or baked pudding. It is not a hard sauce (no method here calls for chilling) and it is not a boiled custard, since the butter is the dominant fat.
- The hinge: never let it boilCook it in a bowl over simmering water, whisking, until it thickens and coats a spoon — an instant-read thermometer should show 170-180F. Above that the eggs scramble and the sauce breaks into curds and butter. Straining will not fully rescue it.
- Cup measures of the periodThe book does not define its cup; American receipts of the 1870s generally reckoned it at about a half-pint, close to a modern cup. On that basis one cup of butter is two sticks, 8 oz, and one cup of sugar about 7 oz. The proportion of butter is high by modern taste and can be reduced.
- "Suga"Almost certainly a printer's slip for sugar. Granulated white sugar was widely available by this date; brown sugar would give a heavier, darker sauce.
- "Flavour to taste"Period cookbooks flavour such sauces with vanilla, grated nutmeg, lemon rind, or brandy or sherry. Reckon on about a teaspoon of extract or two tablespoons of spirits for this quantity, added off the heat.
- Order of workCream the butter with the sugar, beat in the eggs one at a time, then whisk in the milk in gradually before the mixture goes over the heat.
- Yield and servingAround three cups, on the recipe's own measures — enough for a pudding serving six to eight. Serve it warm; it thickens as it cools and will need thinning with a little hot milk if held.
The Home Cook Book (Chicago, first published 1874) was assembled from recipes contributed by local women and sold to benefit the Home for the Friendless, which is why so many of its entries are terse, unsigned and printed much as handed in — this one even keeps the typo. Pudding sauce was a fixture of the period: steamed, boiled and baked puddings were a standard American dessert, and were usually served with a sauce. Nineteenth-century books often left the method unstated, on the assumption that a cook would know that eggs, sugar, butter and milk are thickened over hot water rather than over direct heat.