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SAUCE FOR BOUILLI. (See Pot-au-Feu)
When the bouilli or boiled beef which has been stewed in a pot-au-feu is to be served, a sauce made as follows may be poured over it, or sent to table in a tureen as an accompaniment. Mince a boiled carrot, and put it into a stewpan with a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, half a dozen button mushrooms, two or three pickled cucumbers, some pickled walnuts, a chopped onion, a little pepper, salt, and cayenne. Pour over these ingredients a pint of good stock, simmer all very gently together till the liquor is considerably reduced and flavoured pleasantly. Add thickened brown gravy to make the requisite quantity of sauce, let the preparation boil up, and serve. If more convenient, mushroom ketchup may be substituted for the mushrooms and walnut pickle for the walnuts. Time to prepare, about three-quarters of an hour.
A garnish sauce for the boiled beef lifted out of a pot-au-feu, built on the pot's own broth and sharpened with pickles. The whole thing hangs on reduction: the stock has to lose enough volume to concentrate before any thickening goes in.
- The pintCassell's is an English book, so the pint is imperial: 20 fl oz, or 2 1/2 US cups. Reduced "considerably" means down by roughly a third to a half, leaving 1 1/4 to 1 2/3 cups before the gravy is added.
- Thickened brown gravyNot gravy from a roast joint but a made brown sauce: stock cooked with a browned roux, close to what the period sometimes called espagnole. Something like half a cup, whisked in at the end, should be enough to bind the sauce; adding raw flour to the reduced liquor gives a pasty result.
- Pickled walnutsStill sold in Britain in jars, unripe green walnuts pickled in spiced malt vinegar, black and soft. They have no close substitute; capers plus a spoonful of the walnut-pickle vinegar approximates the salt-and-vinegar note but not the malty depth.
- Mushroom ketchupThe named alternative is the thin, dark, salty mushroom liquor sold under that name, not tomato ketchup. It is intensely salted, so a tablespoon is a starting point, and salt should be judged only after it goes in.
- Salt lastPickled cucumbers, pickled walnuts and reduced stock all bring salt, and reduction concentrates it further. Season at the end rather than at the start as written, or the finished sauce will be too salty to eat with the beef.
- Button mushroomsThe original gives no instruction to cut them, unlike the carrot, onion and parsley: half a dozen small ones. Halve or quarter anything larger than a walnut so they cook through in the simmering time.
- Chop coarselyThe cucumbers and walnuts want to stay visible; this is a chunky relish-like sauce, not a smooth one. Cut them to a rough quarter-inch dice. The carrot, though, the recipe directs to be minced.
- Yield and timingAbout 2 cups of sauce, enough for six servings of boiled beef. Three-quarters of an hour is realistic: most of it is the gentle reduction, which should not be rushed at a hard boil.
Bouilli is simply the French past participle -- "boiled" -- and by the nineteenth century it had become the standing name for the beef lifted out of the pot-au-feu after its long simmer. The broth was the first course and the meat the second, and the recurring complaint about the second course was that the beef had given everything it had to the liquid. Hence a whole small genre of sauces for bouilli: sauce piquante, sauce ravigote, horseradish, and mixtures like this one, all leaning on vinegar and pickle to put back the sharpness that hours in the pot had cooked away. Pickled walnuts and mushroom ketchup are the English signature here; both were pantry staples of the period, bottled at home in late summer and drawn on all winter as a source of savour.