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Cream Sauce
Put a piece of butter the size of an egg into a saucepan with a dessert-spoonful of fine flour, and beat them smoothly together with a wooden spoon. When the butter is melted, add gradually half a pint of cream or new milk, and a little salt, pepper, and pounded mace. Let the sauce simmer over a gentle fire, and stir it constantly. If it becomes too thick, it may be thinned by the addition of a small quantity of milk or cream. The juice of a lemon may be added, if liked. This sauce may be used for turbot, cod, and other fish, vegetables, and white dishes. Time, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 4d., if made with milk. Sufficient for rather more than half a pint of sauce.
A plain béchamel by another name, written before anyone standardised a spoon. The proportions are unusually rich in butter, which is why it stays glossy rather than pasty.
- Butter the size of an eggRoughly 2 oz (55 g). That is a generous amount against a dessert-spoonful of flour, so this is a loose, buttery sauce rather than a stiff one.
- A dessert-spoonfulAbout 2 teaspoons, midway between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. Expect a pouring consistency; add a second spoonful of flour if you want it to coat.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups — not 8 oz. The stated yield of "rather more than half a pint" allows for the butter and flour.
- Cook the flour firstBeat the butter and flour together before the liquid goes in. Note that the recipe itself says only to add the milk once the butter has melted, and gives no time for cooking out the flour at this stage; the quarter-hour of simmering that follows does that work.
- Add the liquid graduallyWarm milk or cream, poured in a little at a time with constant stirring, is what keeps it smooth. Cold liquid dumped in at once will set the roux into lumps.
- Pounded maceThe outer covering of the nutmeg, sold now as blades or ground. Ground mace from a jar is fine; a small pinch is enough.
- The lemon juiceBest added off the heat, at the last moment. Acid stirred into hot cream can curdle it, though the flour in this sauce gives some protection.
- A quarter of an hourLonger than needed at a true simmer; five to eight minutes over low heat will cook out the flour.
- ServingThe recipe gives a yield of rather more than half a pint, not a number served. It also takes well to chopped parsley, capers, or a spoonful of the fish's poaching liquor.
This is a familiar sauce of the nineteenth-century English kitchen: butter and flour cooked together, let down with milk, seasoned with mace. The book's "cream or new milk" and the costing at fourpence tell you who it was written for; new milk meant fresh, unskimmed milk of the day, and a household that could not spare cream was expected to make the sauce anyway. Mace was a common English seasoning for white fish sauces.