Chapter V: =Sauces.= (2)

For this, and all other preparations, apples will be whiter if just dipped into fresh water the instant before they are put into the stewpan. They should be quickly lifted from it, and will stew down easily to sauce with only the moisture which hangs about them. They should be watched and often gently stirred, that they may be equally done.

BAKED APPLE SAUCE.

(_Good._)

Put a tablespoonful of water into a quart basin, and fill it with good boiling apples, pared, quartered, and _carefully_ cored: put a plate over, and set them into a moderate oven for about an hour, or until they are reduced quite to a pulp; beat them smooth with a clean wooden spoon, adding to them a little sugar and a morsel of fresh butter, when these are liked, though they will scarcely be required.

The sauce made thus is far superior to that which is boiled. When no other oven is at hand, a Dutch or an American one would probably answer for it; but we cannot assert this on our own experience.

Good boiling apples, 1 quart: baked 1 hour (more or less according to the quality of the fruit, and temperature of the oven); sugar, 1 oz.; butter, 1/2 oz.

BROWN APPLE SAUCE.

Stew gently down to a thick and perfectly smooth marmalade, a pound of pearmains, or of any other well-flavoured boiling apples, in about the third of a pint of rich brown gravy: season the sauce rather highly with black pepper or cayenne, and serve it very hot. Curry sauce will make an excellent substitute for the gravy when a very piquant accompaniment is wanted for pork or other rich meat.

Apples pared and cored, 1 lb.; good brown gravy, third of pint 3/4 to 1-1/4 hour. Pepper or cayenne as needed.

WHITE ONION SAUCE.

Strip the skin from some large white onions, and after having taken off the tops and roots cut them in two, throw them into cold water as they are done, cover them plentifully with more water, and boil them very tender; lift them out, drain, and then press the water thoroughly from them; chop them small, rub them through a sieve or strainer, put them into a little rich melted butter mixed with a spoonful or two of cream or milk, and a seasoning of salt, give the sauce a boil, and serve it very hot. Portugal onions are superior to any others, both for this and for most other purposes of cookery.

For the finest kind of onion sauce, see _Soubise_, page 126, which follows.

BROWN ONION SAUCE.

Cut off both ends of the onions, and slice them into a saucepan in which two ounces of butter have been dissolved; keep them stewing gently over a clear fire until they are lightly coloured; then pour to them half a pint of brown gravy, and when they have boiled until they are perfectly tender, work the sauce altogether through a strainer, season it with a little cayenne, and serve it very hot.

ANOTHER BROWN ONION SAUCE.

Mince the onions, stew them in butter until they are well coloured, stir in a dessertspoonful of flour, shake the stewpan over the fire for three or four minutes, pour in only as much broth or gravy as will leave the sauce tolerably thick, season, and serve it.

SOUBISE.

(_English Receipt._)

Skin, slice, and mince quickly two pounds’ weight of the white part only of some fine mild onions, and stew them in from two to three ounces of good butter over a very gentle fire until they are reduced to a pulp, then pour to them three-quarters of a pint of rich veal gravy; add a seasoning of salt and cayenne, if needed; skim off the fat entirely, press the sauce through a sieve, heat it in a clean stewpan, mix it with a quarter of a pint of rich boiling cream, and serve it directly.

Onions, 2 lbs.; butter, 2 to 3 oz.: 30 minutes to 1 hour. Veal gravy, 3/4 pint; salt, cayenne: 5 minutes. Cream, 1/4 pint.

SOUBISE.

(_French Receipt._)

Peel some fine white onions, and trim away all tough and discoloured parts; mince them small, and throw them into plenty of boiling water; when they have boiled quickly for five minutes drain them well in a sieve, then stew them very softly indeed in an ounce or two of fresh butter until they are dry and perfectly tender; stir to them as much _béchamel_ as will bring them to the consistence of very thick pea-soup, pass the whole through a strainer, pressing the onion strongly that none may remain behind, and heat the sauce afresh, without allowing it to boil. A small half-teaspoonful of pounded sugar is sometimes added to this _soubise_.

White part of onions, 2 lbs.: blanched 5 minutes. Butter, 2 oz.: 30 to 50 minutes. Béchamel, 3/4 to 1 pint, or more.

_Obs._—These sauces are served more frequently with lamb or mutton cutlets than with any other dishes; but they would probably find many approvers if sent to table with roast mutton, or boiled veal. Half the quantity given above will be sufficient for a moderate-sized dish.

MILD RAGOUT OF GARLIC, OR, L’AIL À LA BORDELAISE.

Divide some fine cloves of garlic, strip off the skin, and when all are ready throw them into plenty of boiling water slightly salted; in five minutes drain this from them, and pour in as much more, which should also be quite boiling; continue to change it every five or six minutes until the garlic is quite tender: throw in a moderate proportion of salt the last time to give it the proper flavour. Drain it thoroughly, and serve it in the dish with roast mutton, or put it into good brown gravy or white sauce for table. By changing very frequently the water in which it is boiled, the root will be deprived of its naturally pungent flavour and smell, and rendered extremely mild: when it is not wished to be quite so much so, change the water every ten minutes only.

Garlic, 1 pint: 15 to 25 minutes, or more. Water to be changed every 5 or 6 minutes; or every 10 minutes when not wished so _very_ mild. Gravy or sauce, 1 pint.

MILD ESCHALOT SAUCE.

Prepare and boil from half to a whole pint of eschalots by the preceding receipt; unless very large, they will be tender in about fifteen minutes, sometimes in less, in which case the water must be poured from them shortly after it has been changed for the second time. When grown in a suitable soil, and cultivated with care, the eschalots are sometimes treble the size that they are under other circumstances; and this difference must be allowed for in boiling them. Drain them _well_, and mix them with white sauce or gravy, or with good melted butter, and serve them very hot.

A FINE SAUCE, OR PURÉE OF VEGETABLE MARROW.

Pare one or two half-grown marrows and cut out all the seeds; take a pound of the vegetable, and slice it, with one ounce of mild onion, into a pint of strong veal broth or of pale gravy; stew them very softly for nearly or quite an hour; add salt and cayenne, or white pepper, when they are nearly done; press the whole through a fine and delicately clean hair-sieve; heat it afresh, and stir to it when it boils about the third of a pint of rich cream. Serve it with boiled chickens, stewed or boiled veal, lamb cutlets, or any other delicate meat. When to be served as a purée, an additional half-pound of the vegetable must be used; and it should be dished with small fried sippets round it. For a _maigre_ dish, stew the marrow and onion quite tender in butter, and dilute them with half boiling water and half cream.

Vegetable marrow, 1 lb.; mild onion, 1 oz.; strong broth or pale gravy, 1 pint: nearly or quite 1 hour. Pepper or cayenne, and salt as needed; good cream, from 1/4 to 3/4 of pint. For purée, 1/2 lb. more of marrow.

EXCELLENT TURNIP, OR ARTICHOKE SAUCE FOR BOILED MEAT.

Pare, slice, and boil quite tender, some finely-grained mild turnips, press the water from them thoroughly, and pass them through a sieve. Dissolve a slice of butter in a clean saucepan, and stir to it a large teaspoonful of flour, or mix them smoothly together before they are put in, and shake the saucepan round until they boil: pour to them very gradually nearly a pint of thin cream (or of good milk mixed with a portion of cream), add the turnips with a half-teaspoonful or more of salt, and when the whole is well mixed and very hot, pour it over boiled mutton, veal, lamb, or poultry. There should be sufficient of the sauce to cover the meat entirely;[58] and when properly made it improves greatly the appearance of a joint. A little cayenne tied in a muslin may be boiled in the milk before it is mixed with the turnips. Jerusalem artichokes make a more delicate sauce of this kind even than turnips; the weight of both vegetables must be taken after they are pared.

Footnote 58:

The objection to _masking_ a joint with this or any other sauce is,
that it speedily becomes cold when spread over its surface: a portion
of it at least should be served very hot in a tureen.

Pared turnips or artichokes, 1 lb.; fresh butter, 1-1/2 oz.; flour, 1 large teaspoonful (twice as much if all milk be used); salt, 1/2 teaspoonful or more; cream, or cream and milk mixed, from 3/4 to 1 pint.

OLIVE SAUCE.

Remove the stones from some fine French or Italian olives by paring the fruit close to them, round and round in the form of a corkscrew: they will then resume their original shape when done. Weigh six ounces thus prepared, throw them into boiling water, let them blanch for five minutes; then drain, and throw them into cold water, and leave them in it from half an hour to an hour, proportioning the time to their saltness; drain them well, and stew them gently from fifteen to twenty-five minutes in a pint of very rich brown gravy or _Espagnole_ (see Chapter IV.); add the juice of half a lemon, and serve the sauce very hot. Half this quantity will be sufficient for a small party.

Olives, stoned, 6 oz.; rich gravy, 1 pint: 15 to 25 minutes. Juice, 1/2 lemon.

_Obs._—In France this sauce is served very commonly with ducks, and sometimes with beef-steaks, and with stewed fowl.

CELERY SAUCE.

Slice the white part of from three to five heads of young tender celery; peel it if not very young, and boil it in salt and water for twenty minutes. If for white sauce put the celery, after it has been well drained, into half a pint of veal broth or gravy, and let it stew until it is quite soft; then add an ounce and a half of butter, mixed with a dessertspoonful of flour, and a quarter of a pint of thick cream or the yolks of three eggs. The French, after boiling the celery, which they cut very small, for about twenty minutes, drain and _chop_ it; then put it with a slice of butter into a stewpan, and season it with pepper, salt, and nutmeg; they keep these stirred over the fire for two or three minutes, and then dredge in a dessertspoonful of flour: when this has lost its raw taste, they pour in a sufficient quantity of white gravy to moisten the celery, and to allow for twenty minutes’ longer boiling. A very good common celery sauce is made by simply stewing the celery cut into inch-lengths in butter, until it begins to be tender; and then adding a spoonful of flour, which must be allowed to brown a little, and half a pint of _good_ broth or beef gravy, with a seasoning of pepper or cayenne.

Celery, 3 to 5 heads: 20 minutes. Veal broth, or gravy, 1/2 pint; 20 to 40 minutes. Butter, 1-1/2 oz.; flour, 1 dessertspoonful; cream, 1/4 pint, or three yolks of eggs.

WHITE CHESTNUT SAUCE.

Strip the outer rind from six ounces of sound sweet chestnuts, then throw them into boiling water, and let them simmer for two or three minutes, when the second skin will easily peel off. Add to them three quarters of a pint of good cold veal gravy, and a few strips of lemon rind, and let them stew gently for an hour and a quarter. Press them, with the gravy, through a hair-sieve reversed and placed over a deep dish or pan, as they are much more easily rubbed through thus than in the usual way: a wooden spoon should be used in preference to any other for the process. Add a little cayenne and mace, some salt if needed, and about six tablespoonsful of rich cream. Keep the sauce stirred until it boils, and serve it immediately.

Chestnuts without their rinds, 6 oz.; veal gravy, 1 pint; rind of 1/2 lemon: 1-1/4 hour. Salt; spice; cream, 6 tablespoonsful.

_Obs._—This sauce may be served with turkey, with fowls, or with stewed veal cutlets.

BROWN CHESTNUT SAUCE.

Substitute rich brown gravy for the veal stock, omit the lemon-rind and cream, heighten the seasonings, and mix the chestnuts with a few spoonsful of _Espagnole_ or highly flavoured gravy, after they have been passed through the sieve.

PARSLEY-GREEN, FOR COLOURING SAUCES.

Gather a quantity of young parsley, strip it from the stalks, wash it very clean, shake it as dry as possible in a cloth, pound it in a mortar, press all the juice closely from it through a hair-sieve reversed, and put it into a clean jar; set it into a pan of boiling water, and in about three minutes, if _gently_ simmered, the juice will be poached sufficiently; lay it then upon a clean sieve to drain, and it will be ready for use.

Spinach-green, for which particular directions will be found at the commencement of Chapter XXIV., is prepared in the same manner. The juice of various herbs pounded together may be pressed from them through a sieve and added to cold sauces.

TO CRISP PARSLEY.

Wash some branches of young parsley well, drain them from the water, and swing them in a clean cloth until they are quite dry; place them on a sheet of writing paper in a Dutch oven, before a brisk fire, and keep them frequently turned until they are quite crisp. They will become so in from six to eight minutes.

FRIED PARSLEY.

When the parsley has been prepared as for crisping, and is _quite_ dry, throw it into plenty of lard or butter, which is on the point of boiling; take it up with a skimmer the instant it is crisp, and drain it on a cloth spread upon a sieve reversed, and placed before the fire.

MILD MUSTARD.

Mustard for instant use should be mixed with milk, to which a spoonful or two of very thin cream may be added.

MUSTARD THE COMMON WAY.

The great art of mixing mustard is to have it perfectly smooth, and of a proper consistency. The liquid with which it is moistened should be added to it in small quantities, and the mustard should be well rubbed, and beaten with a spoon. Mix half a teaspoonful of salt with two ounces of the flour of mustard, and stir to them by degrees sufficient boiling water to reduce it to the appearance of a thick batter: do not put it into the mustard-glass until it is cold. Some persons like a half-teaspoonful of sugar in the finest powder mixed with it. It ought to be sufficiently diluted always to drop easily from the spoon; and to bring it to this state more than a quarter of a pint, and less than _half_ a pint of liquid will be needed for four ounces of the best Durham mustard.

For Tartar mustard see Chapter VII.

FRENCH BATTER.

(_For frying vegetables, and for apple, peach, or orange fritters._)

Cut a couple of ounces of good butter into small bits, pour on it less than a quarter of a pint of boiling water, and when it is dissolved add three quarters of a pint of cold water, so that the whole shall not be quite milk warm; mix it then by degrees and very smoothly with twelve ounces of fine dry flour and a _small_ pinch of salt if the batter be for fruit fritters, but with more if for meat or vegetables. Just before it is used, stir into it the whites of two eggs beaten to a solid froth; but previously to this, add a little water should it appear too thick, as some flour requires more liquid than other to bring it to the proper consistence; this is an exceedingly light crisp batter, excellent for the purposes for which it is named.

Butter, 2 oz.; water, from 3/4 to nearly 1 pint; little salt; flour, 3/4 lb.; whites of 2 eggs, beaten to snow.

TO PREPARE BREAD FOR FRYING FISH.

Cut thick slices from the middle of a loaf of light stale bread, pare the crust entirely from them, and dry them gradually in a cool oven until they are crisp quite through; let them become cold, then roll or beat them into fine crumbs, and keep them in a dry place for use. To strew over hams or cheeks of bacon, the bread should be left all night in the oven, which should be sufficiently heated to brown, as well as to harden it: it ought indeed to be entirely converted into equally-coloured crust. It may be sifted through a dredging-box on to the hams after it has been reduced almost to powder.

BROWNED FLOUR FOR THICKENING SOUPS AND GRAVIES.

Spread it on a tin or dish and colour it, without burning, in a gentle oven or before the fire in a Dutch or American oven: turn it often, or the edges will be too much browned before the middle is enough so. This, blended with butter, makes a convenient thickening for soups or gravies of which it is desirable to deepen the colour; and it requires less time and attention than the French _roux_ of page 10.

FRIED BREAD-CRUMBS.

Grate lightly into very fine crumbs four ounces of stale bread, and _shake_ them through a cullender;[59] without rubbing or touching them with the hands. Dissolve two ounces of fresh butter in a frying-pan, throw in the crumbs, and stir them constantly over a moderate fire, until they are all of a clear golden colour; lift them out with a skimmer, spread them on a soft cloth, or upon white blotting paper, laid upon a sieve reversed, and dry them before the fire. They may be more delicately prepared by browning them in a gentle oven without the addition of butter.

Footnote 59:

This is not necessary when they are lightly and finely grated of
uniform size.

Bread, 4 oz.; butter, 2 oz.

FRIED BREAD FOR GARNISHING.

Cut the crumb of a stale loaf in slices a quarter of an inch thick; form them into diamonds or half diamonds, or shape them with a paste-cutter in any another way; fry them in fresh butter, some of a very pale brown and others a deeper colour; dry them well, and place them alternately round the dish that is to be garnished. They may be made to adhere to the edge of the dish when they are required for _ornament_ only, by means of a little flour and white of egg brushed over the side which is placed on it: this must be allowed to dry before they are served.

For SWEET-PUDDING SAUCES, see Chapter XX.

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