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GRAVY, SHALLOT (for broils and grills)
Peel three shallots, cut them into thin slices, and put them into a saucepan, with three table-spoonfuls of best French vinegar; boil for five minutes, then add a quarter of a pint of clear brown gravy, two pinches of salt, and two grains of cayenne. Boil altogether five minutes longer and serve as hot as possible. Probable cost, 3d. Sufficient for nearly half a pint of gravy.
A sharp shallot reduction meant to be spooned over grilled chops and steaks. It stands or falls on the quality of the brown gravy, which in Cassell's means a properly reduced meat stock rather than anything from a packet.
- The gravy is the whole dish"Clear brown gravy" here means a clear, strained brown meat gravy rather than a thickened pan gravy. Use a good beef or veal stock, well reduced; a watery stock gives a thin, harshly acidic sauce because there is nothing to carry the vinegar.
- A quarter of a pintBritish measure, so 5 fl oz (about 140 ml), a little over half a US cup.
- Two grains of cayenneA grain is an apothecary weight of about 65 mg, so two grains is roughly 1/16 teaspoon — a genuine pinch, not a spoonful.
- Best French vinegarA good wine vinegar. Distilled white vinegar is too aggressive at three tablespoons against only 5 fl oz of stock.
- Boiling the shallots firstThe initial five minutes in vinegar alone is a reduction step: it softens the shallot and drives off the raw bite of the acid. Do not shorten it or the finished sauce tastes of neat vinegar.
- Slice thin, and decide about strainingThe original leaves the shallot in. Strain it out if you want a clean glaze for a steak; leave it for a rougher relish-like sauce on a mutton chop.
- Yield and servingJust under half a pint, as the recipe states. The text directs that it be served as hot as possible, so make it while the meat rests.
- CostThreepence in pre-decimal money — the book quotes prices to help a cook judge economy, not as anything convertible today.
Shallot and vinegar sauces of this type belong to the family of nineteenth-century "sharp" sauces served with grilled and broiled meats, close in method to sauce Bercy and to the shallot-and-vinegar reduction at the base of a béarnaise. The pattern is the point: reduce an acid with aromatics, then let a good brown gravy absorb it. Such a sauce assumes brown gravy already made and to hand, which is the period's real signature. "Best French vinegar" would have been understood to mean French wine vinegar, of which the Orléans product was the best known in England.