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Sauce for Roast Meat
A good sauce for roast meat may be made in ten minutes, with a quarter of a pint of water, the juice of a lemon strained, a sprig of parsley chopped fine, an ounce and a half of butter, all seasoned with white pepper and salt. Set the whole over the fire in a glazed sauce-pan and keep it there until it is just ready to boil; then serve. This may be varied by adding two tablespoonfuls of nasturtiums or capers. It may also be made with white vinegar, in place of the lemon; or the flavoring may be used with the gravy sauce usually served with the meat.
A ten-minute butter-and-lemon sauce of the sort that once stood in for a pan gravy. The whole thing hinges on heat control.
- Never let it boilThe instruction to take it off "just ready to boil" is the recipe. Held below a simmer the butter stays suspended in the acidulated water; at a rolling boil it separates into oil and a thin lemon liquid. Pull it the moment the surface trembles.
- A quarter of a pintIf the book is working in imperial measure that is 5 fl oz; in US measure it is 4 fl oz, or half a cup. Either works here, so use half a cup and adjust the lemon to taste.
- An ounce and a half of butterThree tablespoons. Cold butter cut in pieces and swirled in off direct heat will hold together better than a single lump melted over the flame.
- "Glazed sauce-pan"Glazed earthenware or similar enamelled ware. The likely point is that acid attacks bare metal, copper especially, and picks up a metallic taste. Any modern stainless, enamelled or nonstick pan answers.
- NasturtiumsThe pickled green seed pods, not the flowers. They were a standard kitchen-garden substitute for capers. Rinsed capers are the direct swap; the recipe's two tablespoons is right for this quantity.
- White pepperUsed to keep black specks out of a pale sauce. It is a real flavour difference, not just cosmetic, and worth buying if you make sauces of this type often.
- The vinegar versionThe recipe says simply white vinegar. Wine vinegar is gentler than distilled; either way, vinegar is sharper than lemon and has no sweetness behind it, so start with less than the volume of juice and taste.
- YieldRoughly three-quarters of a cup once the butter and lemon juice are counted in. It does not reheat; make it while the joint rests.
This belongs to a family of quickly made "melted butter" sauces common in English and American cookery: water, butter, an acid and a green herb, warmed but never boiled. The nasturtium variation is a mark of the period -- nasturtium pods were widely grown and pickled at home as a substitute for imported capers, and household books through the nineteenth century give directions for putting them up. The closing suggestion -- that the flavourings can simply be stirred into the usual gravy -- points to a book written for cooks who already had a roast and its drippings in hand and wanted a way to vary them without extra expense.