Superior Fruit-Sauces for Sweet Puddings

Instructions

1. Clear rich fruit syrups, such as the Sirop de Groseilles of Chapter XXIX., or those from which cherries, apricots, damsons, and other plums are taken when they have been prepared in them for drying, make the finest possible sauces for sweet puddings.
2. For example, take a pound of ripe Morella cherries, and prick them separately with a large needle.
3. Heat them slowly and simmer them from seven to ten minutes with three quarters of a pound of castor-sugar, and allow them to become cold in their juice.
4. They will be excellent if laid on dishes and slowly dried; and the syrup from them will be a delicious accompaniment to a pudding (or to plain boiled rice); it will also afford a most agreeable summer beverage mixed with water, slightly iced, or not.
5. Other varieties of these sauces are made by stewing the fruit tender without sugar, then rubbing it through a sieve, and diluting it with wine; or simply mixing and boiling it with sufficient sugar to render it sweet and clear.