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Mushrooms, Sauce of, White
To preserve the colour of this sauce see that the mushrooms are well cleansed from the soil that hangs about them, and drop them, first removing the outer skin by means of salt, into a bowl of water and lemon-juice. Drain, wipe dry, and chop them finely, without the stalks. Put them with an ounce of butter into a stewpan to simmer until tender, but do not let the butter get colour. Add half a pint of bechamel sauce, and simmer a few minutes longer, when the sauce should be rubbed through a fine sieve. Serve hot. When required to be warmed, place it into a vessel of boiling water. Serve poured over boiled fowls. Time, fifteen minutes altogether. Sufficient, one pint of mushrooms for half a pint of sauce.
A white mushroom sauce built on béchamel, meant for poached chicken. Everything here is aimed at keeping the sauce pale.
- The hinge: no colour anywhereThe butter must stay blond and the mushrooms must sweat rather than brown, so keep the heat low and covered. Any browning at this stage turns the finished sauce grey-beige, which defeats the point of a white sauce.
- Peeling mushrooms"Removing the outer skin by means of salt" reflects Victorian field mushrooms, which had tough, dirty cuticles. Cultivated white or button mushrooms need only a wipe; skip the peeling and just trim the stalk ends.
- Acidulated waterThe bowl of water and lemon juice is presumably a quick rinse rather than a long soak; the recipe gives no time. Drain and dry them thoroughly as instructed, or extra water will thin the sauce.
- MeasuresHalf a pint of béchamel is 10 fl oz in the British imperial pint of this book, about 1¼ US cups. "One pint of mushrooms" is a volume measure, probably of mushrooms before chopping, roughly 6-8 oz by weight.
- BéchamelBéchamel -- Béchamel in books of this period is a milk-based white sauce, sometimes enriched with cream or built on a light stock. A modern medium béchamel of 1 oz butter, 1 oz flour and 10 fl oz milk, well cooked out so it does not taste of raw flour, is the right consistency.
- SievingRubbing through a fine sieve gives a smooth, pale sauce flecked with mushroom. A blender will emulsify it further but also lightens the colour and can make it gluey; the sieve is the better choice here.
- ReheatingThe "vessel of boiling water" is a bain-marie. Direct heat can catch the flour and spoil the texture, so reheat it in a bowl over simmering water, stirring.
- Yield and seasoningAbout 1¼ cups, enough for a chicken serving three or four. The original gives no salt or pepper; season at the end, and a squeeze of lemon lifts it.
White mushroom sauce belongs to the family of French-derived compound sauces that filled English cookery books after the mid-nineteenth century, when base base for sauces served over boiled fowl, sweetbreads or veal was often a b\em>New Dictionary of Cookery is generally placed around the turn of the century, and its instinct for pallor is period-specific: a white sauce that stayed genuinely white was, by tradition, something to aim for, hence the fuss over peeling, acidulated water and butter that must not take colour. The mushrooms assumed here are field or gathered mushrooms with their soil still clinging, since commercial cultivation in Britain was only beginning to industrialise; the button mushroom of uniform size and clean cap is largely a twentieth-century convenience.