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Brandy Sauce
Place in a saucepan one and a half ounces granulated sugar, one gill cold water, the rind of one-quarter of a lemon and let come to a boil, then add two and a half tablespoons brandy and half tablespoon good butter, remove the pan from the fire and briskly whisk the sauce till the butter is melted. Remove the lemon peel and use as directed.
A thin, poured brandy sauce of the sort served over steamed and boiled puddings — not the whipped hard sauce Americans often mean by the name. It comes together in about five minutes.
- The hinge: off the heat before the brandy worksThe hinge: the pan comes off the fire immediately -- The brandy and the butter both go in while the pan is still on the fire, but only for a moment: the pan is pulled off at once and the whisking is done off the heat. Prolonged boiling after the brandy is in would drive off the alcohol that is the point of the sauce.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces in American usage (a British gill was 5). No thermometer is needed here: this is a light syrup, not a sugar stage.
- Sugar by weightOne and a half ounces of granulated sugar is about 3 tablespoons, a scant quarter cup. Against a gill of water that makes a light syrup rather than a sweet one.
- Lemon rindPeel a wide strip with a vegetable peeler and take no white pith, which turns the syrup bitter over a boil. A quarter of a lemon is roughly one two-inch strip.
- "Good butter"Period shorthand for fresh, sweet butter of sound quality. Use unsalted.
- ConsistencyThis stays pourable and slightly syrupy; it will not thicken like a custard. If you want it heavier, reduce the syrup a minute or two longer before the brandy goes in rather than adding starch.
- YieldAbout two-thirds of a cup — enough for four to six servings of Christmas pudding, apple charlotte or a steamed sponge. It is best made just before serving and does not reheat gracefully once the butter is in.
Poured brandy sauces belong to the long English tradition of dressing boiled and steamed puddings with something alcoholic and warm, and they travelled into American cookbooks as the plainer cousin of hard sauce, which beats brandy into butter and sugar and is served cold in a lump. The method here — a sugar syrup flavoured with lemon peel, spiked with brandy, then finished with a knob of butter whisked in off the fire for gloss — is the familiar professional habit of finishing a sauce with butter. The closing instruction "use as directed" suggests that another recipe elsewhere in the book calls for it.