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PORTUGUESE SAUCE (for Fish)
Beat the yolks of two fresh eggs, and mix them with four ounces of butter and a table-spoonful of lemon-juice. Put these ingredients into an earthen jar, and set this in a small saucepan of hot water. Put the pan on a slow fire, and beat the contents of the jar unceasingly until the sauce begins to thicken. Add a small quantity of water in order to make it of the consistency of thick cream. Season with pepper and salt, and serve. Probable cost, 7d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A butter-and-yolk emulsion in the hollandaise family, cooked in a makeshift double boiler. Everything hinges on heat control.
- The hinge: keep the water below a simmerThe water in the outer pan should be hot but barely trembling, around 160-175F. If it boils, the yolks set into curds and the sauce is finished; pull the bowl off the heat the moment it thickens to coating consistency.
- "An earthen jar" and "a slow fire"Use a heatproof glass or stainless bowl set over a saucepan, the base clear of the water. A slow fire means the lowest steady heat your burner will hold.
- Four ounces of butterThat is 113g, one US stick or eight tablespoons. Cut it cold into small cubes and add them a few at a time rather than all at once, whisking each in before the next; the emulsion holds far better.
- Whisk, not a spoonThe recipe does not say what to beat with. A small balloon whisk is quicker than a spoon and incorporates the butter more evenly.
- The added waterA tablespoon or two of warm water, dribbled in at the end, loosens the sauce to thick cream and helps it hold as it stands.
- If it breaksTake it off the heat, drop in an ice cube or a spoonful of cold water, and whisk hard. Failing that, start a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and whisk the broken sauce into it a spoonful at a time.
- Egg safetyYolks held at this temperature are only lightly cooked. For anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs.
- Yield and servingSufficient for four or five as written, over poached or grilled white fish. It will not reheat; hold it up to half an hour in a warm bowl over standing warm water, whisking now and then.
- Probable cost, 7dSevenpence in pre-decimal currency, the sort of costing Cassell's gave throughout to help a household budget by the dish.
Despite the name, this is essentially the same yolk-butter-acid emulsion the French codified as hollandaise, and Victorian and Edwardian cookery books were casual about such labels: it appears variously as Dutch sauce, Hollandaise, sauce au beurre, and here as Portuguese. The earthen jar set in a pan of hot water is a lesson in indirect heat, taught at a time when the domestic cook's alternative was an open range with no thermostat and no reliable low setting.