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Piquant Sauce, for Storing
The month of August is the best time for making this sauce, and it should not be used for fully three months after it is made. Take equal quantities of young walnuts and large mushrooms; put them into separate pans, bruise them well, and whilst bruising sprinkle a little salt in with them. A pound of salt will be sufficient for a peck of mushrooms and a hundred and fifty walnuts. Let them lie for a week, turning and bruising them frequently; then press them well, and drain off the liquor. Boil it separately until the scum ceases to rise. Measure it, and mix it in equal quantities, and with each pint of the mixed liquid put a pint of vinegar, half a blade of mace, four allspice, two cloves, a quarter of an ounce of ginger, as much cayenne as will lie on a threepenny piece, half a salt-spoonful of mustard seed, a clove of garlic, and three shallots. Boil and skim the sauce for twenty minutes. Pour it out, and when cold strain it, and mix with each pint a glassful of port, a quarter of a pint of claret, and a table-spoonful of soy. Put the liquid into small bottles, cork and seal them securely, and store--as indeed should be done with all such preparations--in a cool, dry place. Probable cost, uncertain.
This is a Victorian store sauce in the mushroom-and-walnut ketchup family: a salted extract, boiled down, spiced, fortified and bottled. Nothing about it is quick, and the quantities assume a household laying in a year's supply.
- Scale firstA peck is 8 dry quarts, which for mushrooms is somewhere around 5-7 lb, and 150 green walnuts is a substantial crop. The proportions hold if you divide everything by four or six; the ratios to keep are the pound of salt to a peck of mushrooms and 150 walnuts, and the pint of vinegar to each pint of mixed liquor.
- Young walnutsThese are green walnuts picked in July or early August, whole husk and all, before the shell hardens - a pin should pass through them cleanly. They are not the shelled kernels sold for eating, and they stain skin and worktops a deep brown that does not wash out. Wear gloves.
- Salt-spoon, threepenny pieceA salt-spoon is about a quarter teaspoon, so half of one is a scant eighth. A threepence was a small silver coin about 16 mm across; the cayenne it holds is a pinch, call it an eighth of a teaspoon per pint.
- Blade of mace, glassfulA blade of mace is one whole piece of the dried aril, so half a blade is half a piece - not ground mace. A "glassful" here is a wineglass, 2 fl oz; the quarter pint of claret is 5 fl oz in British measure.
- SoyThe tablespoon of "soy" is soy sauce, then sold in England as an imported bottled condiment. Use a dark, naturally brewed one; it is there for colour and depth, not seasoning, since the sauce is already very salty.
- The hinge: reduce until the scum stopsThe first boiling of the drained liquor concentrates the flavour and, with the salt and vinegar, is what helps the sauce keep. Skim patiently and do not stop early. Boil the two liquors separately, as written, then measure each so they can be mixed in equal quantities.
- Bottling and storageSterilise small bottles, fill while the strained sauce is cold, and leave little headspace. It is carried by salt and vinegar rather than by any measured process, so keep the bottles in the refrigerator once opened and discard any that smell yeasty, look cloudy or push their corks.
- Yield and useThe vinegar alone doubles the volume of the mixed liquors, and the port, claret and soy add more again, less whatever boils away in the twenty minutes. It is a seasoning, not a pouring sauce: a teaspoon or two into gravies, stews, hashes and fish sauces. The three-month rest is not optional -- the recipe says it should not be used for fully three months.
Mushroom and walnut ketchups were the English store cupboard's answer to a short season and a long winter, and by the middle of the nineteenth century they were a familiar feature of general cookery books. The word ketchup itself is generally traced to a fermented fish brine of southeast Asia, borrowed into English in the seventeenth century and then applied to any dark, salty bottled condiment; tomatoes came late to the family. What is striking in a compilation like Cassell's is how directly this sauce anticipates the commercial bottled sauces that were displacing it - salted vegetable liquor, vinegar, spice, garlic and shallot, fortified wine and soy is very nearly the specification of a Victorian factory sauce, made at home a peck at a time. The recipe closes with the note "probable cost, uncertain."