Fine Pudding Sauce

Take a large half-pint cup of the best fresh butter, and the same quantity of powdered loaf-sugar. Put them together in an earthen pan, and beat them to a light thick cream. Then mix a jill or wine-glass of boiling water, and a large wine-glass of the best brandy, with the grated yellow rind and juice of a large lemon or orange; and a small nutmeg, grated. Mix these ingredients, gradually, with the beaten butter and sugar: and transfer the sauce to a small tureen, putting a spoon or ladle into it.

If designed for sauce to a plum-pudding or any other large one, you will require a pint of butter, a pint of sugar, half a pint of boiling water with half a pint of brandy, two lemons or oranges, and a large nutmeg, or two small ones. Divide the sauce in two tureens. A boiled pudding for company requires no finer sauce than this.

Where real cream is plenty, a bowl of it well sweetened with sugar, and flavored with nutmeg, is nice for any boiled pudding. If you add wine or lemon juice to cream sauce, previously mix the acid with the sugar, and make it very sweet before you put them to the cream, lest it should curdle.

Vanilla Sauce

Split and break up a small stick of vanilla, and boil it in a very little milk, till all the vanilla flavor is extracted. Then strain it through very fine muslin, and stir it into the cream. Give it one boil up in a small porce lain sauce-pan; and sweeten it well with white sugar.

Plain Sauce For Pudding

Stir together (as in making pound cake) equal quantities of fresh butter and white sugar. This is the usual proportion; but if you can stir or beat it easily, try a little less butter, and a little more of the sugar. Grate in some nutmeg, and the yellow rind of a fresh lemon, and send it to table heaped on a small plate, with a tea-spoon near it.*

Many persons prefer, with plain puddings, cold butter on a butter plate, and sugar from the sugar-bowl; mixing it for themselves on their own plate. This is best for boiled fruit pudding or dumplings; and for egg or batter puddings, molasses or syrup is very good; and costs but little.

* The butter and sugar sauce is very nice flavored and colored with the juice of strawberries or raspberries.

Cranberry Sauce

Pick the cranberries clean, seeing that no stems, sticks, or dead leaves are left among them. Put them into a cullender, or sieve, and wash them through two waters. Cook them in a porcelain-lined, or enameled stew-pan, without any additional water. The water that remains about them after washing is quite sufficient for stewing them properly. No stewed fruit should be too thin or liquid. Keep a steady heat under the cranberries, stirring them up from the bottom frequently: and when they are soft, mash them with the back of the spoon. When they are quite shapeless, take them off the fire, and while they are very hot, stir in, gradually, an ample quantity of nice brown sugar. They require much sweetening. Season them with nothing else. Their natural flavor is sufficient (if well sweetened) and cannot be improved by spice, lemon, or any of the usual condiments. Always buy the largest and ripest cranberries. The best things are cheapest in the end.

In stewing any sort of fruit, do not add the sugar till the fruit is done, and taken from the fire. If sweetened at the beginning, much of the strength of the sugar evaporates in cooking; besides rendering the fruit tough and hard, and retarding the progress of the stew.

In America, sweet sauce is eaten with any sort of roast meat. Send it to table cold. For company, put it into a blanc-mange mould, and turn it out in a shape, first dipping the mould, for a minute, in warm water to loosen it.