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Lyonnaise Sauce for Cutlets, Etc
Cut the stalks from half a dozen large ripe tomatoes. Divide them into halves, and put them into a stewpan with four table-spoonfuls of good gravy, and a little salt and cayenne, and let them simmer very gently. When quite tender, press them through a hair sieve. Slice two Spanish onions very finely, fry them in a little fresh butter until they are soft and very lightly browned, then put them into a stewpan with the tomato-pulp, two table-spoonfuls of good brown gravy, and a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice. Stir gently over the fire for three or four minutes, and serve hot. Time, three-quarters of an hour to stew the tomatoes. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
M
A straightforward tomato-and-onion sauce that reads oddly only because of its Victorian equipment and shorthand. The work is in the sieving and in keeping the onions pale.
- The hinge: onions soft, barely colouredThe instruction is "soft and very lightly browned" — cook them slowly in butter over low heat until they collapse and take only the faintest colour. Onions pushed well past golden can taste bitter and darken the finished sauce, and pale onion is what this sauce is built on.
- "Good gravy" and "brown gravy"Not thickened pan gravy in the modern sense but reduced meat stock or meat juices — the household's stockpot liquor, brown gravy being a darker version made from browned meat. Use a well-reduced beef or veal stock; 4 tbsp for the stewing and 2 tbsp at the end, as the recipe states.
- StewpanAny heavy saucepan. Victorian stewpans were often tinned copper with a lid; the tinning mattered because tomatoes and lemon juice attack bare copper. Use stainless or enamelled cast iron rather than aluminium.
- Hair sieveA fine horsehair sieve, used because metal discoloured acidic purées. A nylon drum sieve or a fine mesh strainer works; a food mill with the fine plate is faster and holds back skins and seeds just as well.
- Spanish onionsStill sold under that name — large and mild. Two of them is a lot of onion for six people; perhaps 1 lb 8 oz trimmed.
- TomatoesSix large ripe tomatoes is about 2 lb. Out of season, drained tinned plum tomatoes give a better result than pale fresh ones, though they will need less than the stated three-quarters of an hour.
- TimingThree-quarters of an hour of gentle simmering is for whole tomato halves breaking down in only four tablespoonfuls of liquid. Watch for scorching — keep the heat very low.
- YieldSufficient for six to eight as written, spooned over lamb or veal cutlets. It reheats well and holds a day or two covered in the refrigerator.
In French kitchen shorthand, à la lyonnaise means with onions, a usage generally traced to the reputation of Lyon and its surrounding country for onion cookery. The heavy hand with tomato here reflects the later nineteenth century, when tomatoes had moved from a suspect novelty to a staple of English sauce-making. Cassell's belongs to the era of the big compendium dictionaries aimed at middle-class households running a cook, which is why the entry gives a probable cost — 1s. 4d. was real information to a mistress checking the kitchen accounts. The single-letter attribution "M" at the end may mark a contributed receipt, though this is only a guess.