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HERB SAUCE (for flavouring)
Slice a stick of horse-radish very finely, and with it two shallots, and a clove of garlic. Strip the leaves from a sprig of thyme, basil, marjoram, winter savoury, and parsley, and put all into a saucepan. Pour over them four table-spoonfuls of vinegar, the juice of a lemon, and a pint of cold water. Add a dozen peppercorns, a quarter of a salt-spoonful of cayenne, a salt-spoonful of bruised celery-seed, a leaf of tarragon, a dessert-spoonful of salt. Bring the sauce to a boil, colour rather darkly with burnt sugar, and let it simmer gently for ten minutes. Strain through a jelly-bag, and when cold, put it into bottles, and cork securely until wanted for use. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for one pint and a quarter.
This is a Victorian "store sauce" — a seasoning liquid meant to be bottled and kept on the shelf for months. The recipe reads harmlessly, but the preservation method behind it does not meet any modern standard, and the problem is structural rather than a matter of timing.
- The acidity is far too low to preserveThe acidity is unmeasured -- Four tablespoons of vinegar and the juice of one lemon are diluted into a full pint of water, plus the water in the vegetables. Whether the finished liquid falls below the pH 4.6 threshold that keeps Clostridium botulinum dormant depends on the strength of the vinegar and the buffering of the vegetables, and nothing in the recipe measures or checks it.
- A corked bottle is an anaerobic containerA corked bottle is a low-oxygen container -- Ten minutes at a simmer kills spoilage yeasts and moulds but not bacterial spores. Sealing a low-acid, room-temperature liquid under a cork tends towards the oxygen-poor conditions in which those spores can germinate, and the result gives no reliable smell or cloudiness to warn you.
- Garlic, shallot and horseradish are soil cropsAlliums and roots are the classic carriers of botulinum spores into home preserves. Slicing them raw into the pan and then bottling the strained liquid carries that risk straight into the bottle.
- The salt is a seasoning, not a preservativeA dessert-spoonful — roughly two teaspoons — across a pint and a quarter works out at something like one and a half to two per cent by weight, far below the levels that preserve. That flavours the sauce and does nothing to make it shelf-stable.
- Straining is not sterilisingThe sauce is cooled, passed through a jelly-bag and only then bottled. Every stage after the boil reintroduces contamination, and the bottles themselves are never sterilised in the instructions.
- If you want a herb seasoning sauceUse a current recipe with stated vinegar strength and refrigerated storage, or one processed to a tested schedule. The Victorian flavour profile — horseradish, tarragon, celery seed, cayenne — is worth borrowing; the keeping method is not.
- Notes on the original measuresA salt-spoonful is about a quarter teaspoon, a dessert-spoonful about two teaspoons, and a "stick" of horse-radish means a length of the fresh root. "Burnt sugar" is caramel colouring, sugar cooked dark and let down with water, used here purely for colour.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the English bottled sauce, when every kitchen kept a rank of dark glass at the back of the store cupboard: mushroom ketchup, walnut ketchup, Harvey's, and dozens of household versions of the commercial sauces then being sold by Lea & Perrins and their imitators. A "sauce for flavouring" like this one was not poured over food at table but added by the spoonful to gravies, hashes, soups and made dishes, the Victorian equivalent of a stock cube or a splash of Worcestershire. The herb list am thyme, basil, marjoram, winter savory, parsley, tarragon am is close to what is often described as the standard English kitchen-garden bunch of the period, and the burnt sugar reflects a general expectation that a savoury bottled sauce should look dark. The costing in pence is given for almost every entry in the book.