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Ravigote Sauce, for Meat and Poultry of Various Kinds
Work an ounce of flour smoothly into two ounces of butter. Add the strained juice of half a lemon, a dessert-spoonful of chopped parsley and a little pepper and salt. Put the paste into a saucepan with a quarter of a pint of milk or cream, and stir until it is on the point of boiling. Have ready in a separate saucepan a table-spoonful of tarragon vinegar, a table-spoonful of chilli vinegar, a table-spoonful of Worcester sauce, and a table-spoonful of the essence of anchovies. Boil this mixture for three or four minutes, add it to the sauce, which should have been slightly cooled, and serve. Time, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A sharp, salty compound sauce built on a butter-flour paste rather than a cooked roux. The whole thing hangs on temperature control at the end.
- The hinge: add the acid off the heatFour tablespoons of sharp liquid (two of vinegar, plus Worcester sauce and anchovy essence) poured into simmering milk can split it. Let the milk base cool for two or three minutes below a simmer, as the recipe directs, then stir the hot vinegar mixture in gradually.
- Beurre manié, not a rouxThe flour is kneaded raw into soft butter and dropped into the milk, which thickens as it heats. Whisk continuously or it will go lumpy, and keep it just short of boiling for a minute or two so the flour loses its raw taste.
- A quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, so a scant 2/3 cup. Cream behaves far better than milk here given the amount of acid going in.
- Essence of anchoviesA Victorian bottled anchovy extract, no longer sold under that name. Anchovy paste thinned with a little water, or Italian colatura di alici, does the same job; start with two teaspoons and taste, as it is the main source of salt.
- Chilli vinegarVinegar steeped with dried red chillies, once a standard cruet item. Any hot pepper vinegar works, or steep two dried chillies in white wine vinegar overnight.
- Worcester sauceWorcestershire sauce. The recipe already has anchovy in it twice over, so hold back the added salt until you have tasted the finished sauce.
- TarragonTarragon vinegar supplies the herb-and-acid character associated with ravigote. If you cannot find it, use white wine vinegar and a tablespoon of chopped fresh tarragon.
- YieldSomething over a cup of quite pungent sauce, which matches the original claim of five or six servings only if it is spooned over rather than poured.
Ravigote comes from the French ravigoter, to revive or perk up, and in French practice covers two things: a cold vinaigrette loud with herbs, capers and shallot, and a hot velouté sharpened with vinegar and finished with herb butter. Cassell's version leans on the hot form but rebuilds it with the contents of a late-Victorian British cruet stand -- chilli vinegar, Worcestershire, anchovy essence -- which is characteristic of the way English household books of the 1870s and 80s absorbed French sauce names while substituting bottled condiments for classical stocks and reductions. The pricing in pence, given here as 8d., was a standard feature of Cassell's entries, aimed at a cook or housekeeper working to a weekly allowance. Sauces of this kind were doing practical work: they were served with boiled fowl, reheated joints and other plain meat that needed something assertive alongside it.