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REFRESHING SAUCE (Sauce Rafraichissante)
Put two shallots, minced very fine, into a bowl, with two table-spoonfuls of small mustard and cress. Mix the juice of two fresh limes, a glass of claret, a table-spoonful each of French vinegar, horse-radish vinegar, and onion vinegar; add them to the contents of the bowl, and season to taste with sugar, salt, and mignonette pepper. Then put in a drop of garlic vinegar, or rub the bowl previously with a morsel of garlic. Prepare some hours before using. It is a good sauce for hot meats, grilled or broiled, or for kidneys or grilled fish.
A cold, uncooked relish-sauce built on wine, citrus and a battery of flavoured vinegars — closer to a loose salsa verde than to anything thickened. The only technique that matters is the resting: made and served immediately it tastes like sharp raw shallot, and after several hours it turns into something rounded.
- A glass of claretAn unqualified "glass" of wine in Victorian receipts is generally taken as a wineglass, commonly reckoned at about 2 fl oz (60 ml), though period wineglasses varied and some held twice that. Start at 2 oz of a dry red Bordeaux-style wine and judge the balance against the lime juice.
- Mustard and cressThe Victorian salad staple was a punnet of seedlings — white mustard and garden cress sprouted together on damp flannel, cut at about an inch. Any peppery micro-greens or a mix of finely snipped watercress and mustard sprouts will do; two tablespoons means loosely packed, chopped.
- Mignonette pepperCoarsely cracked peppercorns, often a mixture of white and black. The name is traditionally said to come from a resemblance to mignonette seed, though that derivation is customary rather than documented. Crush in a mortar rather than grinding fine — the texture is part of the point.
- The flavoured vinegarsHorse-radish, onion and garlic vinegars were among the flavoured vinegars period cookery books gave directions for, made by steeping the grated root or sliced bulb in vinegar for a week or two and straining. Horse-radish and onion vinegars are hard to find now, though garlic vinegar is still sold; steep a tablespoon of grated fresh horseradish, or a sliced shallot, in white wine vinegar for a few days, or substitute plain vinegar and grate a little fresh horseradish into the sauce directly.
- French vinegarWine vinegar, as distinct from English malt vinegar; white wine vinegar is the usual modern stand-in.
- Rubbing the bowlThe garlic alternative is not a lesser option. A cut clove wiped round a glass or china bowl gives a background note; a drop of garlic vinegar is sharper and more forward. Do not do both.
- Resting"Some hours" is the recipe's only guidance; a few hours, or overnight in the fridge, will do. The shallot loses its raw edge and the vinegars settle into the wine. Stir and re-taste for sugar and salt just before serving, as the acidity reads stronger cold.
- Yield and servingAs written this makes roughly 3/4 cup (180 ml), enough for four to six portions. Spoon it over the meat or fish at the table rather than cooking with it — heat drives off the whole point of the thing.
Sauces called rafraichissante — refreshing — belong to the nineteenth-century repertoire of cold, sharp accompaniments meant to cut the richness of grilled and broiled meats, kidneys and oily fish, the same job filled by ravigote, sauce verte and the various "store" sauces of the English pantry. What dates it precisely is the run of flavoured vinegars: horse-radish, onion and garlic vinegars stood alongside tarragon and chilli vinegar in the nineteenth-century store cupboard. Cassell's, first issued in the 1870s and reissued in expanded form for decades after, was addressed to the domestic household, and this sauce assumes exactly that pantry — several bottled vinegars, a glass of claret to spare, and fresh limes. The instruction to prepare it hours ahead is the tell of a kitchen that planned dinner in the morning.