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Pike, White Sauce For
Melt one ounce of butter and mix smoothly with it a dessert-spoonful of flour. Stir in gradually half a pint of water and let the sauce boil. Add off the fire the well-beaten yolks of two fresh eggs with salt and cayenne to season it pleasantly. Stir the sauce over a gentle fire until it is quite hot without boiling, add a few drops of lemon-juice, if liked, and serve. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain egg-thickened velouté of the sort Victorian cooks poured over boiled freshwater fish. It is quick, but the second stage is unforgiving.
- The hinge: the yolks must not boilOnce the yolks go in, the sauce is a custard and will curdle if it simmers. Keep it over the gentlest heat, stir constantly, and pull it off when it thickens and coats the spoon — around 175F/80C on an instant-read thermometer. If it does break, a stick blender or a spoonful of cold water whisked in hard will often bring it back.
- Dessert-spoonfulTwo level teaspoons, midway between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. With an ounce of butter that gives a slack roux, which is what you want here — the yolks do most of the thickening.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz / 285 ml, not the American 8 fl oz. Use the larger measure or the sauce will be stodgy before the eggs are added.
- Water, or something betterThe original simply calls for water. Court-bouillon or the strained poaching liquid from the pike gives it flavour it otherwise lacks; a light fish stock does the same job.
- CayenneCayenne was a common warm seasoning in Victorian fish sauces. A pinch is enough — the heat should be barely identifiable, sitting behind the salt.
- Lemon at the end onlyAcid added before the yolks have set encourages curdling. Add the few drops off the heat, just before serving, and taste as you go.
- Yield and timingRoughly 10 fl oz / 300 ml of sauce, enough for four or five portions of poached fish as stated. Make it while the fish rests; it will not sit or reheat, and it thickens further as it cools.
- Pike itselfPike is bony and rarely sold in most markets. The sauce suits any firm poached white fish — pollock, hake, cod or zander.
A roux loosened with liquid, then finished with yolks off the heat — the same method that underlies sauce allemande. Pike was a serious table fish in Britain and across northern Europe long before it became a curiosity, valued in monastic and estate fishponds because it grows fast in still water, and it appears constantly in earlier English cookery served with strongly seasoned sauces. The flesh is lean, dry and notoriously full of fine Y-shaped bones, which is why it almost never arrives naked at the table; a rich egg-bound sauce compensates for both faults at once. The stated cost of sixpence is a reminder of the book's audience — Cassell's priced its recipes so that a household cook could reckon the expense of a dish before committing to it.