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Spanish Sauce, Made from Bones
Take the bone of a leg of mutton or of a piece of beef weighing six or seven pounds. Break it into small pieces, and put these into a stewpan with a large onion stuck with three cloves, a sliced carrot, half a dozen outer sticks of celery (or, if this is not at hand, as much bruised celery-seed as will lie on a threepenny-piece), a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a couple of leeks (if they can be had), half a dozen peppercorns, and a little salt. Pour over these ingredients three quarts of cold water. Let the liquor boil, skim carefully, and simmer gently for four hours, or until it is reduced to two quarts. Strain it, and when it is cold take away any fat there may be on the top. When Spanish sauce is wanted, take as much of this stock as will make the requisite quantity; make it hot, and dissolve a little Bovril in it--a tea-spoonful will be sufficient for a pint. Thicken with brown thickening, let it simmer by the side of the fire till it has thrown up the grease, strain through a sieve, and serve. When brown thickening is not at hand, a substitute may be made as follows. Knead together in a saucepan equal proportions of butter and flour. Stir this paste quickly over a slow fire for three minutes till it is brightly coloured without being at all burnt. Moisten it with the stock, let the sauce simmer gently to throw up the grease, and when it is smooth and thick it will be ready for serving. Time, five hours. Probable cost, 3d. per pint.
A thrift version of espagnole: a bone stock stretched with Bovril and bound with a brown roux. Two things carry it — a genuinely brown but unburnt roux, and the slow off-centre simmer that clears the fat.
- The hinge: colour the roux without scorchingThe recipe asks for a paste "brightly coloured without being at all burnt," and three minutes of butter and flour over a slow fire will take it to a light brown at most. Any acrid note and it is finished — brown flour loses thickening power as it darkens, so a burnt roux gives you bitterness and thin sauce at once.
- "Simmer by the side of the fire"On a range, set the pan half off the burner at the barest simmer. The convection pushes fat and scum to the cool side, where you skim it away. This is dépouillage, and it is what separates a clean sauce from a greasy one; the recipe simply has you carry on until the grease has risen.
- A threepenny-piece of celery seedThe silver threepence was about 16 mm across — a scant quarter teaspoon. Celery seed is far more assertive than celery stalk, so err under rather than over.
- BovrilStill sold as a concentrated beef extract, though the formulation has changed over the years. A teaspoon per pint is what the recipe gives; it is very salty, so hold back the seasoning until the sauce is finished and reduced.
- Brown thickeningThe Victorian larder standby: flour cooked brown in fat, kept in a jar, spooned in as needed. The recipe's own substitute is simply making a small brown roux to order, which is what most cooks will do.
- Bones and quantitiesA leg-of-mutton or beef bone from a six or seven pound joint is roughly 1–1.5 lb of bone. Three quarts of cold water reduced over four hours to two quarts; a stockpot with the lid ajar gives about that rate.
- Browning the bonesThe original puts them in raw. Roasting the broken bones with the carrot and onion before they go in the pan will give more colour and depth without the extract.
- YieldTwo quarts of stock, enough for several batches of sauce. The stock freezes well; the finished sauce is best made in the quantity you need, since a roux-bound sauce skins and separates on standing.
Espagnole — "Spanish sauce" — is one of the brown foundation sauces of French professional cookery, in print well before the nineteenth century, built on a rich brown stock and a brown roux; the Spanish name is old and its origin disputed, often said to refer to Spanish ham or tomatoes in early versions, though no version of the story is well documented. What is distinctly late-Victorian here is the framing: Cassell's presents it as a domestic economy, made from a bone and finished with Bovril, the beef extract marketed heavily in Britain from the 1880s. The costing — threepence a pint — is the point of the entry as much as the method, and the airy "if leeks can be had" tells you the recipe was written for a household cook working from whatever the week's marketing had produced.