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Fish Sauce, Without Butter
Boil down a table-spoonful of horse-radish, an onion, four cloves, and two blades of mace pounded, in half a pint of water and a quarter of a pint of good vinegar. When the onion is soft, mince it with a couple of anchovies, and stir it into the sauce, adding a tea-spoonful of salt, and half the quantity of black pepper. Mix the beaten yolks of three eggs (which should be first strained) into the sauce. Do this gradually, and turn the sauce from the pan to a basin, and then stir it over the fire till it is thick enough to serve. Time to boil the sauce, half an hour; to thicken with eggs, five minutes.
An egg-thickened, sharply acidic fish sauce of the old English school, made without butter and therefore wholly dependent on careful handling of the yolks. Read the note on heat before you start.
- The hinge: never let it boil after the eggs go inOnce the strained yolks are in, the sauce must be held below about 180F/82C. The original's move "from the pan to a basin" may have been a way of dropping the heat before the sauce goes back over the fire; a basin set over simmering water, stirred constantly, is the safest reading, and the original allows five minutes for the thickening.
- Imperial measuresCassell's is a British book, so half a pint is 10 fl oz (about 1¼ cups) and a quarter pint is 5 fl oz, the old gill. If you work in US pints you will start with roughly a fifth less liquid, which matters here because the sauce is reduced before thickening.
- What half an hour's boiling doesThe 15 fl oz of water and vinegar will reduce considerably over half an hour, leaving a concentrated, very sharp infusion. The cloves and mace are pounded, so they will not lift out whole; strain the infusion if you want them out. Taste: if it has gone past pleasantly sour, loosen it with a little water rather than trying to correct it with the eggs.
- Blades of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg, sold whole as "blades" or ground. Two blades are roughly a quarter teaspoon of ground mace, though conversions vary; the original says to pound them, so ground is a fair substitute.
- HorseradishA tablespoonful means freshly grated root. Bottled prepared horseradish already contains vinegar and often cream or sugar; if that is all you have, use it and cut the quarter pint of vinegar back somewhat.
- AnchoviesIn this period anchovies were sold as small whole salted fish, so 'a couple' most likely means two of those; two salted or oil-packed fillets minced to a paste are a workable modern reading. Anchovy essence is not an equivalent. Add the teaspoon of salt last and taste first, since anchovy and reduction together may have done the job.
- Strain the yolksThe instruction is not fussiness. Pressing the yolks through a sieve breaks the chalazae and any membrane, so the finished sauce sets evenly instead of catching in threads.
- Yield and servingEnough for four to six portions of poached or boiled white fish. Serve at once and warm; egg-thickened sauces do not reheat and will not hold long.
Butterless sauces of this kind belong to a long English tradition of dressing plain boiled fish with something sharp: anchovy, vinegar, horseradish, mace and cloves recur constantly in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fish sauces, and the same flavour set survives in bottled anchovy and Worcestershire sauces. The title is the point of the entry. Cassell's was a household dictionary aimed at the middle-class kitchen of the 1870s onward. Thickening with egg rather than flour is also the older method, closer to the medieval and early modern practice of binding sauces with yolks, almonds or bread.