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TURTLE SAUCE (to serve with Calf's Head)
Thicken a pint of beef or veal gravy with a tea-spoonful of brown thickening, and flavour it with two table-spoonfuls of turtle store sauce and half a tea-spoonful of the essence of anchovy. Let it boil, and it will be ready for serving. If the store sauce is not at hand, mince a shallot finely, and put it into the thickened gravy with half a tea-spoonful of essence of anchovy, three or four leaves of fresh basil, the strained juice and thinly-cut rind of half a lemon, a pinch of cayenne, and a glassful of sherry. Simmer the sauce gently for a few minutes till it is pleasantly flavoured, strain through a fine sieve, and it will be ready for serving. Time to simmer the sauce, five or six minutes. Sufficient for eight or nine people.
A quick pan sauce built on stock, with two versions: one leaning on a bottled sauce that no longer exists, one made from scratch. Make the second.
- Turtle store sauce is goneA "store" sauce is a strongly flavoured keeping sauce, made up in quantity at home or bought ready-made, meant to give ordinary gravy something of the flavour of turtle soup; period versions run to sherry, herbs, lemon, spice and anchovy. It is no longer available, so the recipe's second paragraph is the working version.
- Brown thickeningCassell's "brown thickening" is flour cooked in butter until nut-brown and kept on hand in a jar. A teaspoonful into a pint of gravy gives a very light body; if you want a sauce that coats, use a tablespoon of brown roux and simmer a little longer.
- A pint is 20 fl ozImperial measures throughout: the pint is 20 fl oz (about 2½ US cups), and a "glassful" of sherry means a wine glass of the period, roughly 2 to 3 fl oz. Use a dry amontillado or oloroso rather than cream sherry.
- Essence of anchovyA thin bottled anchovy extract. Anchovy paste can stand in, though it is thicker and saltier, so start with a little less and taste; a half teaspoon is meant to season, not to announce itself.
- Lemon rind, thinly cutPeel with no white pith, and take it out with the strainer. Left in much longer than the five or six minutes given, it can turn the sauce bitter.
- The gravy is the whole sauceWith no store sauce to hide behind, everything depends on the beef or veal stock. A reduced homemade brown stock, or a good commercial demi-glace let down with water, is worth the trouble; thin bouillon will taste of sherry and nothing else.
- BasilFresh leaves, added whole and strained out, contribute a clove-like note that dried basil does not reproduce well. If you must substitute, use a pinch and taste early.
- YieldAbout 2½ cups, which the book calls enough for eight or nine — a spooned sauce over sliced meat rather than a pool. Season with salt only at the end; anchovy, sherry reduction and stock all carry it.
Turtle sauce belongs to the long Victorian project of making cheap ingredients taste like expensive ones. Real turtle soup, made from imported green turtle, was a banquet dish of considerable cost and prestige; "mock turtle" soup, built on a boiled calf's head, was the middle-class answer, and it is calf's head that this sauce is designed to accompany. The head supplied the gelatinous texture that turtle was prized for, and a sauce of sherry, lemon, basil, cayenne and anchovy supplied the flavour profile that diners had learned to associate with the real thing. The "turtle store sauce" of the first paragraph shows how well established that profile had become: a shortcut to a taste of luxury, in households that would never see a turtle. Green turtle is now protected under international convention, which is part of why the whole family of turtle and mock-turtle recipes has vanished from the repertoire ut a a good sherry-and-anchovy pan sauce, and it still works on braised or poached meat.