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Cherry Sauce
Cut fifteen candied cherries in quarters, place in a saucepan with two ounces sugar, two tablespoons currant jelly and one and a half gills water; boil eight minutes, then pour in tablespoon maraschino and tablespoon kirsch, lightly mix and use as required.
A short dessert sauce built on currant jelly and two cherry spirits. The only real pitfalls are the archaic liquid measure and the assumption that "maraschino" means what it means on a modern supermarket shelf.
- Gills and ouncesOne and a half gills is 6 fl oz, or three-quarters of a cup. The two ounces of sugar is a weight, roughly a quarter cup granulated.
- Candied cherriesThese are what a modern label calls glace cherries — whole cherries cooked in heavy syrup and dried, sold for fruitcake. They are firm and very sweet; the bright red cocktail cherries in brine-and-syrup jars are not the same thing and will dissolve into mush.
- Maraschino means the liqueurIn this period maraschino was a clear cherry liqueur of the Luxardo type from the Dalmatian coast, made with the cherry kernels and far less sugary than syrup. Do not substitute the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries, which is sugar and almond flavouring and will make the sauce cloying.
- KirschUnsweetened cherry brandy, distilled and clear. Sweetened "cherry brandy" liqueurs will throw the balance off, since the currant jelly and sugar already carry the sweetness.
- The eight-minute boilThis does more than dissolve the sugar; the liquid reduces and concentrates a little, and the jelly gives body. The sauce thickens further as it cools.
- Add the spirits off the heatAdd the spirits at the end -- The recipe adds both liqueurs after the boil and says only to mix lightly; it does not specify taking the pan off the heat, though doing so preserves the aroma that is the point of the sauce.
- Yield and useRoughly a cupful, a few servings. It suits ice cream, rice pudding, poached pears or a plain sponge; warm gently before serving.
Cherry sauces of this kind belong to the hotel dining rooms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where a small repertoire of jelly-and-liqueur sauces was kept ready to dress plain puddings, ices and fruit. Currant jelly does the structural work — pectin and acid give body without a starch thickener or long cooking — a trick that carried into English and American hotel practice. The pairing of maraschino with kirsch is characteristic of the period: maraschino, generally traced to the Zadar distilleries on the Adriatic, was made from marasca cherries with their crushed kernels and so brings a faint bitter-almond note, while kirsch supplies clean fruit spirit. That a book called The International Cook Book should carry such a recipe at all says something about how such volumes worked, presenting continental hotel technique to home cooks as though it were foreign travel.