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Cardinal Sauce
Take half a pint of bechamel sauce, one ounce of butter, the juice of half a lemon, half an ounce of lobster coral, a dessert-spoonful of meat glaze, half a gill of mushroom liquor, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Reduce the sauce in a stewpan with the mushroom liquor, season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of grated nutmeg, add the lemon juice, and whisk in the butter and lobster coral. Strain through a tamis, return into the stewpan, stir in the meat glaze, and keep hot until required for serving. Probable cost, 1s.
A late-Victorian fish sauce that is really a béchamel finished with lobster butter. Everything hinges on temperature at the end: once the butter and coral go in, the sauce must not boil again or it will split and the coral will turn grainy and dull.
- The measuresHalf a pint of béchamel is 10 imperial fl oz, about 1¼ cups. Half a gill of mushroom liquor is about 2½ fl oz, a generous ¼ cup. A dessert-spoonful sits between a teaspoon and a tablespoon — call it two teaspoons.
- Lobster coralThe roe found in a hen lobster, dark green when raw and turning coral red on cooking. How much a lobster yields varies a good deal, so half an ounce is only a rough guide. It is rarely sold on its own; unless you are breaking down a whole hen lobster you are unlikely to have it, and paprika or tomato paste will give the colour without the flavour.
- Meat glazeGlace de viande: brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A teaspoon or two of good commercial demi-glace or veal glace does the same job. Salt hard here — glaze is concentrated, so season after it goes in, not before.
- Mushroom liquorThe strained liquid from stewing mushrooms, or the liquid from a jar or tin of them. Reduced with the béchamel it supplies most of the savoury depth; without it the sauce is merely pink butter.
- TamisA woven cloth or drum sieve, used to force the sauce through and break up the coral. A fine conical strainer with a small ladle, or a warmed fine-mesh sieve and a flexible spatula, does the same. Work quickly so the sauce stays hot enough to pass but not hot enough to break.
- Order of workReduce the béchamel with the mushroom liquor first and get it slightly thicker than you want the finished sauce, since the butter will loosen it. Whisk in the butter and coral off the heat, in small pieces, then strain, then stir in the glaze.
- Holding it"Keep hot until required" means a bain-marie or a very low water bath, covered. Direct heat risks the butter separating out, so keep it gentle.
- Yield and serviceAbout a cup of finished sauce, enough for four servings. It belongs with poached or steamed white fish, lobster, fish quenelles or vol-au-vents, not with red meat.
The name is generally traced to the colour: cardinal red, the shade lobster coral turns when it meets heat, said to match a cardinal's robes. The sauce is one of the classic derivatives of a fish béchamel, and in the French repertoire codified around Escoffier's time it is built the same way — béchamel or fish velouté reduced, then finished with lobster butter, often with truffle and a little cayenne. The "probable cost, 1s." is characteristic of the book, which gave prices so a household could judge a dish against the week's budget — a shilling for a cup of sauce was not trivial, and the entry assumes a kitchen where a hen lobster and a pot of meat glaze were already to hand.