This section is from the book "Practical Cooking And Dinner Giving", by Mary F. Henderson. Also available from Amazon: Practical Cooking And Dinner Giving.
Ingredients: Three-quarters of a cupful of butter, one and a half cupfuls of powdered sugar, four table-spoonfuls of boiling-hot starch, made of flour or corn starch, with either brandy, maraschino, wine, lemon-juice and zest, vanilla, or other flavoring preferred. Stir the butter with a fork to a light cream; add the sugar, and continue to beat it for one or two minutes. Just before serving, stir in with an egg-whisk the boiling starch and the flavoring.
Boil two cupfuls of sugar with two or three table-spoonfuls of water, until it thickens slightly; take it from the fire; stir in a piece of butter the size of a hickory-nut, and either lemon-juice, fruit-juice, or, in winter, fruit sirups, wine, brandy, or any of the flavoring extracts.
A Plain and Cheap Sauce. Ingredients: Three and a half cupfuls of water, one cupful of sugar, a small piece of butter, a table-spoonful of either corn starch or flour, flavoring of either brandy, vanilla, lemon, or wine (with or without a little nutmeg), or zest and cinnamon.
* Five or six minutes will suffice for baking them. - Ed.
When the water boils, stir in the corn starch or flour (rubbed smooth with a little cold water), sugar, and, if used, the yellow rind of a lemon and the cinnamon, and cook well for two or three minutes; take the pan from the fire, and stir in the butter and flavoring (if the lemon and cinnamon are not used).
Ingredients: One pint of water, three table-spoonfuls of flour or corn starch, half a cupful of butter, two cupfuls of sugar, two eggs, half of a nutmeg, half a pint of Madeira or sherry.
Beat the butter and sugar to a cream; add the eggs well beaten, then the nutmeg; heat the wine as hot as possible with-out boiling; bring the water to a boil in another vessel, and stir in the corn starch or flour (rubbed smooth with a little cold wa-ter), and cook it well for about two minutes. Mix well the in gredients off the fire.
Mix a plateful of whipped cream (flavored with wine or va-nilla), the beaten whites of two or three eggs, and pulverized sugar to taste, all together. Pile a bank of this mixture in the centre of a platter, and form a circle of little fruit puddings or Swedish puddings (steamed in cups or little molds), blancmanges, corn-starch puddings, etc., around it; or place a large pudding in the centre, with a circle of the sauce around.
The French bottled apricots, greengage plums, or strawberries make delicious sauces for a Bavarian cream, blanc-mange, charlotte-russe, or corn-starch pudding. They may simply be poured around the pudding on a platter, or the juice may be thickened by boiling it with a very little corn-starch, then adding the fruit to it when cold.
The American canned May-duke cherries (Shrivers) make a good pudding sauce. Boil the juice, and add the slight cornstarch thickening and a little sugar; when cold, add the cherries. It makes a good sauce poured around these puddings.
Fresh red cherries, stewed, sweetened, passed through a sieve, and slightly thickened with corn starch, make another pudding sauce. The Colorado wild raspberries make a fine berry pudding, with the same kind of berry sauce around it. Marmalades and preserves, if not too stiff, make pretty garnishes as well as good sauces.
Ingredients: Half a cupful of butter, one cupful of sugar, the beaten white of an egg, and one cupful of strawberries (mashed).
Rub butter and sugar to a cream; add the beaten white of the egg, and the strawberries thoroughly mashed.
Boiled Custard makes a good sauce. If served with plum-pudding, flavor it with brandy; if served with rice-pudding (in mold) or corn starch or other puddings, flavor it with lemon, vanilla, chocolate, or coffee, etc., etc.
Ingredients: Half a cupful of butter, one cupful of sugar, white of one egg, two table-spoonfuls of wine, a little vanilla, and half a wine-glassful of boiling water.
Beat the butter and sugar for about fifteen minutes; then add the flavoring. Just before sending to the table, add the egg, beaten to a froth, and stir in the boiling water, beating it to a foam; or it may be flavored with brandy or wine, without the vanilla.
This is a French pudding sauce, and an exceedingly good one. It is so rich that one or two table-spoonfuls poured over a fruit, batter, bread, or almost any kind of pudding, are sufficient. The amount of sauce in the receipt is, therefore, enough for six or seven persons.
Put two yolks and one whole egg, also a scant half tea-cupful of sugar, into a little stew-pan; beat them well for a few minutes. Then put the saucepan into another, containing boiling wa-ter, over the fire; beat the eggs briskly with the egg-whisk while you gradually pour in a scant half tea-cupful of sherry; when the sherry is all in, the egg will begin to thicken; then take it from the fire, and add the juice of a quarter of a small lemon.
Dissolve six ounces of cut loaf-sugar in half a pint of boiling water; add a stick of cinnamon, a little lemon-zest, and two cloves, and boil it ten minutes. Next put two ounces of loaf-sugar, dissolved in a table - spoonful of boiling water, on a moderate fire, and stir it until it assumes a light-brown color; pour the other boiled sugar over this; give it one boil, remove it from the fire, and add two or three table-spoonfuls of sherry.
 
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