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Egg Sauce
Blend two ounces of good fresh butter with a dessert-spoonful of flour; put the mixture into a small saucepan with a wine-glassful of water; or, if the sauce be intended for salt fish, of the liquor in which the fish was boiled; see that it is not too salt, a fault which a little milk or water will remedy. Simmer, but do not boil. When ready to boil, draw the saucepan from the fire, and stir in two ounces more of butter and two or three hard-boiled eggs cut small. Time, one minute to simmer. Probable cost, 6d. for this quantity.
A butter-and-egg sauce of the plainest sort, built for boiled salt fish. The whole thing hinges on keeping it below a boil so the butter stays emulsified rather than splitting into oil and curds.
- Never let it boilThe recipe says to simmer but not boil, and the second two ounces of butter go in off the heat. Boiling risks breaking the emulsion into oil and curds.
- A wine-glassfulIn Victorian kitchens this is roughly 2 fl oz (a quarter cup). That gives a very thick sauce with 4 oz butter total; loosen with more liquid or milk to the consistency you want.
- Dessert-spoonful of flourAbout 2 teaspoons, halfway between a tea- and a table-spoon. With 2 oz butter that is barely a roux, so the flour is there for body rather than as a true thickener.
- Cooking liquor and saltSalt-fish water can be aggressively saline. Taste it before you commit, and dilute with plain water or milk as the recipe suggests rather than trusting the fish to be mild.
- Cook out the flour firstGive the butter, flour and liquid two or three minutes of gentle simmering before the final butter goes in, or the sauce will taste of raw paste. The stated "one minute to simmer" is optimistic.
- The eggsTwo or three hard-boiled eggs, chopped fairly fine. Add them at the very end and only warm them through; longer and the whites turn tough and squeaky.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield, only "probable cost, 6d. for this quantity." It thickens as it stands, so it is best made close to serving.
Egg sauce belongs to the long English tradition of serving boiled salt fish with something rich enough to carry it, and it appears in nineteenth-century books alongside recipes for salt cod, ling and haddock. It is essentially a slack white sauce made with the fish's own cooking liquor and enriched with chopped hard-boiled egg. Its persistence is often linked to Lenten and Friday eating, when salt fish was a common observance in Britain. The "probable cost, 6d." is a feature of the book's entries generally.