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Bacon Sauce
Make a mixture of a spoonful of flour and a little water; add to it vinegar and water in equal parts (one tea-cupful), and the yolks of three eggs well beaten. Cut a quarter of a pound of rather fat bacon into pieces the size of large peas, and fry them in a stewpan till they are of a pale brown colour. Add salt and pepper to taste, pour the mixture over them, and stir till thick. As this sauce is to be used cold allow for it, and do not make it too thick to pour. Probable cost, 6d.
A cooked egg-and-vinegar dressing built on bacon fat, meant to be eaten cold with cold meat, salad greens or boiled vegetables. It is closer to a thick vinaigrette-custard than to a modern pan sauce, and the whole thing hangs on keeping the heat low.
- Do not let it boilThree yolks in this quantity of liquid will thicken well below simmering point. The spoonful of flour gives some protection against curdling, but hard boiling can still scramble the yolks and leave the sauce grainy. Pull the pan off the heat while it is still just coating the spoon.
- The tea-cupfulA Victorian teacup is usually reckoned at about 5 to 6 fl oz. The wording is ambiguous: "vinegar and water in equal parts (one tea-cupful)" most likely means a teacupful in total, so roughly 3 fl oz of each, though it can also be read as a teacupful of each. The "spoonful of flour" is unspecified in the original; a tablespoon is a reasonable reading.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period may have been weaker and less harsh than modern distilled white, though strengths varied. Cider vinegar or a decent white wine vinegar gives a milder result; if using 5% distilled vinegar, taste before adding more.
- The bacon"Rather fat bacon" means fatty streaky or slab bacon, dry-cured and not sweetened. Thick-cut streaky diced small is the closest supermarket equivalent; avoid maple or honey-cured, which fights the vinegar. Render it slowly so the fat comes out before the meat browns.
- Salt with restraintThe bacon and its rendered fat carry salt of their own. Taste again once the sauce is cold, since cold dulls the perception of salt.
- Allow for coolingThe instruction not to make it too thick is the practical heart of the recipe: flour, yolk and congealing bacon fat all stiffen as it cools. Stop when it is distinctly looser than you want, and thin with a spoonful of water or vinegar if it sets too firm.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup, enough for four to six as a dressing. It suits cold boiled beef or tongue, hard-boiled eggs, cold potatoes, or dandelion and other bitter leaves.
- KeepingAn egg-thickened sauce with visible meat in it is a same-day preparation. Refrigerate immediately after cooling and use within a day.
Cassell's *New Dictionary of Cookery* was a late-Victorian one-volume reference arranged alphabetically, and it prices most entries as this one does — "probable cost, 6d." Sauces of this type, where bacon fat, sharp vinegar and beaten yolks are bound over gentle heat, belong to a wide European family of warm bacon dressings that also produced the German dressings poured over potato or dandelion salad and the Pennsylvania Dutch hot bacon dressing familiar in American cookbooks. The Cassell's version carries the direction to serve it cold, which turns the dressing into something more like a savoury mayonnaise substitute for the cold-meat suppers and Monday leftovers of English domestic eating in the period. The flour is there as insurance: it stabilises the yolks against curdling.