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Aurora Sauce
Pound the spawn of a freshly-boiled lobster in a mortar, with a piece of butter the size of an egg, until it is quite smooth, and season liberally with cayenne and salt. Put into a saucepan a breakfast-cupful of good white sauce, and add a table-spoonful of lemon-juice. Press the spawn through a fine sieve into the sauce; place it on the fire, and let it simmer gently, taking care to lift it off the fire before it boils. Sufficient for a pair of soles. Probable cost, 10d. Time to simmer, two minutes.
If the spawn is not at hand, the yolks of three eggs may be boiled quite hard, pressed through a colander, and substituted for it.
A coral butter beaten into a white sauce and warmed through — quick, but it fails the moment it boils.
- Never let it boilThe coral (and the egg-yolk substitute) can set and grain if the sauce is boiled, turning it speckled rather than smooth and rose-coloured. The recipe allows a gentle simmer of two minutes, but says to lift the pan off the fire before it reaches boiling point.
- Lobster spawnThis means the roe of a hen lobster, black-green when raw and coral-red once cooked. Only female lobsters carry it, found in the body cavity and, in a berried hen, under the tail. Lobsters are often sold ready cooked and cleaned, so ask for a hen bird, or use the egg-yolk alternative the recipe already gives.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 55 g — roughly half a standard stick. It is there to carry the coral through the sieve and to enrich the finished sauce.
- Breakfast-cupfulA Victorian breakfast cup holds rather more than a modern teacup: reckon 8 to 10 fl oz, so about one US cup of white sauce. Erring toward the smaller measure gives a better colour.
- Good white sauceA plain béchamel — butter and flour cooked out, then milk, or better a fish-stock velouté if you are serving it with sole. It should be thick enough to coat a spoon before the coral butter goes in, since the butter and lemon juice will loosen it.
- Sieving mattersPounding then pressing through a fine sieve is what gives the sauce its even blush. A food processor will not do it alone; work the coral butter through a drum sieve or fine mesh with the back of a ladle afterwards.