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Hot Rum Sauce
Place in a very small, clean saucepan a quarter pint of cold water, two ounces fine sugar, the rind of one sound lemon, three tablespoons good Jamaica rum, one teaspoon cognac, one teaspoon good butter, four drops vanilla essence and a very small piece of cinnamon. Mix well, then let it come to a simmering point; thicken the same with a saltspoon arrowroot, gently mix while allowing to simmer for one minute and a half. Remove the lemon rind and cinnamon. Pour the sauce into a saucebowl and serve separately.
A thin, clear pudding sauce built on a sugar syrup rather than cream or egg. The technique is straightforward; the archaic measures and the behaviour of arrowroot are the two things to get right.
- Quarter pintOn the imperial measure that is 5 fl oz, or about 2/3 cup. On a US pint of 16 fl oz it would be 4 fl oz, rather less liquid for the same thickening.
- Two ounces fine sugarWeight, not volume: about 1/4 cup of caster or ordinary granulated sugar. "Fine" here means finely ground so it dissolves quickly, not confectioners' sugar, which carries cornstarch.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is roughly 1/4 teaspoon. That is a very small amount of arrowroot for this volume of liquid, and it is meant to be — the sauce should coat a spoon lightly and stay translucent, not set into a glaze.
- Slake the arrowroot firstStir it into a teaspoon or two of cold water before it goes near the pan. Dropped in dry it will seize into lumps that no amount of whisking will disperse.
- Ninety seconds and no moreThe short simmer is deliberate. Arrowroot reaches full thickness almost immediately and then breaks down under continued heat, turning the sauce thin and slightly slimy. Take it off the moment it clears and thickens.
- The lemon rindPare it in strips with a peeler, taking as little white pith as possible, so it can be lifted out whole at the end. Grated zest cannot be removed and will leave the sauce cloudy and speckled.
- Vanilla essenceFour drops is a very small quantity, well under 1/8 teaspoon of modern vanilla extract. It is there as a background note behind the rum, not a flavour in its own right.
- The alcohol staysThree tablespoons of rum added at the start of a brief simmer will lose a little to evaporation but by no means all. Worth knowing if it is going to a table with children at it.
- Yield and serviceRoughly 2/3 cup, a small quantity intended to dress a steamed or baked pudding. "Serve separately" means it goes to the table in its own bowl rather than being poured over the pudding in the kitchen.
Hot rum sauce belongs to the family of thin, spirit-based pudding sauces that dressed the boiled and steamed puddings of British and Anglo-American tables — the same role hard sauce played cold. The reliance on Jamaica rum is not incidental: rum from the British West Indies was the cheap, dark, heavily flavoured spirit of the empire's kitchens. Arrowroot as the thickener marks the sauce as a genteel one — it was regarded through the nineteenth century as more delicate and more digestible than flour, and it produces a clear sauce where flour gives a cloudy one, which matters when the sauce is poured at table. The cognac, the vanilla and the cinnamon are the international kitchen's habit of layering: a little of everything, none of it dominant.