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Holstein Sauce, for Fish
Mix a quarter of a pint of the water in which the fish was boiled with an equal quantity of light wine. Thicken the liquid with a table-spoonful of flour, mixed smoothly with two ounces of butter, and stir it over the fire until it boils. Add a salt-spoonful of salt, a little pepper, and the eighth of a nutmeg, grated. Beat the yolk of an egg in a basin, and mix with it the juice of a lemon. Draw the sauce back from the fire for a minute, then stir into it the egg and half an ounce of butter, and serve. Time, a quarter of an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 3d., exclusive of the wine. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A simple velouté finished with egg yolk and lemon, built on the liquid the fish was poached in. The only real difficulty is the finish, which will curdle if rushed.
- The hinge: the yolk goes in off the heatPull the pan aside, let it stop bubbling, then stir in the beaten yolk and the last of the butter. If the sauce is returned to a boil the yolk scrambles and the sauce breaks; keep it below about 180F and serve immediately.
- Quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, a generous half cup. You need the same again of wine, so roughly 1 1/4 cups of liquid in total, yielding about 1 1/2 cups of finished sauce.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon was the smallest spoon on the Victorian table, about 1/4 teaspoon. Salt at the end rather than the start here, since poaching liquid reduced with wine can already be salty.
- "Light wine"A dry white of no great weight: Muscadet, an unoaked Chardonnay, a dry Riesling. Nothing sweet, nothing tannic, and nothing labelled cooking wine, which is salted.
- The thickeningA tablespoon of flour worked into 2 oz butter is a beurre manié rather than a cooked roux. Whisk it into the warm liquid in small pieces and simmer two or three minutes so the flour loses its raw taste before the yolk goes anywhere near it.
- Lemon, with judgementThe juice of a whole lemon can be 3 tablespoons and will dominate this quantity of sauce. Add half, taste, then decide.
- The fish liquidThe recipe assumes you have just poached the fish and have the cooking liquid to hand; it says only "the water in which the fish was boiled", not necessarily a seasoned court bouillon. If you have none, a light fish stock works; plain water gives a thin, floury sauce.
- ServingEnough for four or five portions of poached white fish. It holds a few minutes in a warm bain-marie at most, and will not reheat.
Cassell's borrowed freely from northern European practice and labelled the results with place names. South of Schleswig and within the German Confederation, Holstein passed into Prussian hands after the war of 1866, with formal annexation in 1867, and was much in the British papers at the time. The name attaches to more than one dish: it is better known today in Schnitzel Holstein, veal topped with a fried egg and anchovy, and the connection between them is little more than the egg. What the sauce actually demonstrates is a technique: a white sauce built on the cooking liquor of the thing it will dress, thickened with flour and butter, then enriched at the last moment with yolk and acid. That is the same logic as a French sauce allemande, and the frugality is deliberate — the poaching water is flavour already paid for, and the book prices the sauce at threepence exclusive of the wine.