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Sauce, Mirepoix, or Essence of Vegetables, for Flavouring
When stock is already prepared for sauce, and it requires flavouring, proceed as follows. Take a sliced carrot, a sliced onion, two sticks of celery cut small, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, and a bay-leaf, together with a shallot and an inch or two of raw ham or baconrind, if these are at hand. Dissolve a slice of fresh butter in a saucepan, and stir the above ingredients briskly in the butter over a sharp fire until they become brightly browned. Pour in as much stock as will cover them, and simmer gently. Add pepper and a little spice, if required. A glass of wine may be stirred in or not. When the preparation is pleasantly and rather strongly flavoured, strain it off for use. A larger quantity may be made than is needed for present use. If put in a cool place, it will keep for some days in cool weather. Time to simmer the flavouring, twenty to thirty minutes.
A flavouring base rather than a finished sauce: aromatics browned in butter, wetted with stock, simmered and strained. The strained liquid is stirred into sauces, gravies and braises that taste flat.
- The hinge is the browningMuch of the colour and depth comes from browning the vegetables properly before the stock goes in. Stir them over a brisk heat until the carrot and onion carry real brown edges; pale vegetables give a thin, grassy essence.
- "A sharp fire"Medium-high, not maximum. Butter alone will brown and then burn, so watch it, or add a spoonful of neutral oil to raise the smoke point.
- "A slice of fresh butter"About 1 oz (30 g), unsalted. "Fresh" here means unsalted, in contrast to the heavily salted keeping butter of the period.
- Ham or bacon rindA 2-inch piece of rind or a scrap of unsmoked bacon adds gelatine and savour. A piece of pancetta or the rind cut from prosciutto does the same job; skip it and salt the finished essence a little more assertively.
- "A little spice"In a Victorian kitchen this means a blade of mace, a clove or two, or a scrape of nutmeg, not a modern spice blend. Use a very small amount; the essence gets diluted into a larger sauce, but clove in particular carries far.
- "A glass of wine"A Victorian wineglass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so a modest splash of dry white or Madeira. The recipe leaves it optional and does not say when to add it; stirring it in after browning and letting it reduce before the stock goes in is one workable way.
- Quantities and yieldThe recipe fixes no quantities, so the yield depends on how much stock you use. Use only enough to just cover the vegetables; a full pot of stock produces weak vegetable broth rather than an essence.
- Keeping it"Some days in cool weather" meant a larder. Refrigerate and use within three or four days, or freeze in an ice-cube tray and drop in a cube at a time.
Mirepoix is the standard French name for the diced carrot, onion and celery base that underlies most classical stocks and braises, and it is traditionally said to be named for the Duc de Lévis-Mirepoix, an eighteenth-century French marshal whose cook is credited with the mixture. What Cassell's gives here is a step beyond the plain vegetable cut: the aromatics are browned, moistened, simmered and then discarded, so that only their flavour goes forward into the sauce. That reflects the logic of a large Victorian kitchen, where a foundation stock was made in quantity and neutral by design, and then pushed in whatever direction a particular dish needed by adding a prepared essence. The instruction to make more than is wanted and hold it in a cool place is a reminder that the cook was working without refrigeration and planning several days of service at once.