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Onion Sauce, Brown, Piquant
Fry the onions as in the last recipe. When they are quite tender, pour over them half a pint of gravy mixed smoothly with a table-spoonful of flour, add pepper and salt, if required, a lump of sugar, a dessert-spoonful of tarragon vinegar, and a glass of sherry. Stir the sauce over a gentle fire for ten minutes, pass it through a strainer, and serve as hot as possible. A tea-spoonful of dry mustard is sometimes mixed with the above sauce. Probable cost, exclusive of the wine, 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A brown onion sauce of the standard Victorian type: fried onions let down with gravy, sharpened with tarragon vinegar and sherry, then strained. The measurements are imperial and a few of the vessels and terms need translating.
- "As in the last recipe"The cross-referenced method is not reproduced here, but a brown onion sauce of this type assumes onions sliced and fried slowly until well coloured and completely soft, which is where the colour and sweetness come from. Rushing them to a pale blond gives a thin, raw-tasting result no amount of sherry will fix.
- Half a pint of gravyAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, or a scant 1¼ US cups. "Gravy" in books of this period usually means a rich brown meat broth rather than pan drippings; a well-reduced beef stock is the closest modern equivalent.
- Spoon sizesA Victorian dessert-spoon is about 2 teaspoons, a tablespoon roughly 3 teaspoons as now. A "glass" of wine in recipes of this period generally means a wineglass, conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz.
- A lump of sugarLoaf sugar was broken into lumps of no fixed size; roughly a teaspoon is a reasonable modern stand-in. It reads as a corrective to the vinegar rather than a sweetener, so add it and taste before adding more.
- The flourThe recipe has the flour mixed smoothly into the gravy before it is poured over the onions; doing this with cool gravy makes the mixing easier. Sprinkling flour over hot fried onions gives lumps that no straining will entirely remove.
- Ten minutes over a gentle fireThis is the point at which the flour loses its raw taste and the sauce thickens; do not shorten it. Keep it at a bare simmer, since a hard boil will drive off the sherry's aroma.
- The mustardDry mustard turns bitter with prolonged cooking. Slake the teaspoonful in a little of the strained sauce and stir it in at the end, off the heat.
- Straining and yieldPassing it through a strainer, as directed, gives the smooth sauce intended; pressing the onions through gives more substance if you prefer. As written it serves five or six. The recipe does not say what to serve it with.
Onion sauce in English cookery splits into two families: the pale one bound with milk or cream that traditionally accompanies boiled mutton, and this brown, sharpened version built on gravy. The "piquant" in the title is a nineteenth-century kitchen term for a sauce cut with vinegar and seasoning, echoing the French sauce piquante, and flavoured vinegars were sold ready-made by grocers, chilli and garlic among them. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, issued in parts from the 1870s, was written for the servant-keeping middle-class kitchen, which explains the two details a modern reader notices most: the costing in pence, given "exclusive of the wine", and the confident cross-reference to "the last recipe", assuming a cook working through the book rather than dipping into it.