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Another Good White Sauce
Boil in a sauce-pan, half-pint of water, two cloves, fifteen pepper-corns and a blade of mace. Add two anchovies chopped fine, a quarter of a pound of butter, a little flour and a pint of cream. Let it boil three minutes, stirring it constantly.
A rich anchovy-spiked cream sauce of the older English school, thickened more by reduction than by roux. The quantities are generous by modern standards and the flour is left vague.
- Strain before the dairy goes inThe cloves, peppercorns and mace are aromatics, not garnish. Simmer them in the water, then strain them out before adding the butter, flour and cream, or diners will bite into whole spice.
- MeasuresHalf a pint of water is one cup, a pint of cream two cups, and a quarter pound of butter is one stick (4 oz). "A little flour" is undefined; 1 to 2 tablespoons, worked into the softened butter as a beurre manié, gives a coating sauce without lumps.
- CreamUse heavy cream. Modern light cream and half-and-half have less fat and are more likely to thin or break when reduced hard.
- AnchoviesTwo salt-packed or oil-packed fillets, mashed to a paste, dissolve into the sauce and read as savoury depth rather than fish. Anchovy essence and bottled anchovy sauce were available at the time and can be used the same way.
- Three minutes is shortThat is barely enough to cook out the raw flour. Give it five to eight minutes at a bare simmer, stirring, and hold it below a rolling boil once the cream is in so it does not separate.
- Blade of maceOne blade is a single piece of the dried lacy covering of nutmeg, roughly a large pinch of ground mace as a substitute. Its flavour is close to nutmeg but generally more delicate and less sweet; do not double it.
- SaltNone is called for because the anchovies supply it. Season only at the end, after tasting.
- Yield and useRoughly three cups, enough for six or more servings over poached or boiled fish, boiled fowl or vegetables. It thickens noticeably as it cools.
White sauce in a book of this vintage means the whole family of pale cream and butter sauces served with boiled fish and fowl, and English cookery had long been fond of pointing them up with anchovy. Salted anchovies were one of the few reliably available savoury seasonings before commercial bouillon and monosodium glutamate, and bottled anchovy essence was a familiar late Victorian larder item, kept beside the mushroom ketchup for exactly this purpose. The heading "Another Good White Sauce" is characteristic of the period's compilations, which often printed two or three variants of a staple in sequence without comment, on the assumption the cook knew which one suited the dish in front of her. The whole spices simmered in water and then discarded are an older habit than the roux-first method that French technique later standardised in Anglo-American kitchens.