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Universal Store Sauces, for Flavouring Gravies, Etc
Put two table-spoonfuls of port into a bottle with the same quantity of lemon pickle, chilli vinegar, mushroom and walnut pickle, and one table-spoonful of essence of anchovies. Shake the mixture, and it will be ready for use. If preferred, shallot vinegar may be used instead of lemon pickle. Another excellent store sauce for flavouring gravies may be made as follows. Put half a pint of ketchup into a bottle with a table-spoonful of port, a tea-spoonful of shallot vinegar, a quarter of an ounce of powdered allspice, one ounce of salt, and a little pepper and cayenne. Put the bottle in a warm place for some hours; keep it for a week, then strain and bottle for use.
Two separate blends, both of them concentrates meant to be added by the teaspoon to gravies and made dishes rather than eaten as sauces in their own right. Nothing here is cooked; the keeping power comes from vinegar, salt and anchovy.
- Read "ketchup" correctlyIn an English book of this date ketchup means mushroom or walnut ketchup — a thin, dark, salty, savoury liquid — not tomato ketchup, which is sweet and thick and will produce something quite different. Mushroom ketchup is still made commercially and is the closest match.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, or about 1¼ US cups. The finished second sauce fills a small bottle; the first comes to about nine tablespoons in total — two each of port, lemon pickle, chilli vinegar and the mushroom and walnut pickle, plus one of essence of anchovies.
- Lemon pickle and the pickle liquors"Mushroom and walnut pickle" means the spiced vinegar the pickles sit in, not the solids. Lemon pickle was a spiced, salted preserved-lemon condiment; if you have none, the recipe's own alternative of shallot vinegar is the sensible route, or the brine from Indian-style preserved lemons.
- Chilli vinegar and shallot vinegarBoth are simple infusions rather than products you will find easily. Steep split dried chillies, or sliced shallots, in white wine vinegar for a week or two and strain.
- Essence of anchoviesA thin bottled anchovy extract, closest today to anchovy paste let down with a little water, or to Worcestershire sauce, which descends from exactly this family of seasonings.
- "A warm place for some hours"This means the back of the range or an airing cupboard: warm enough to draw the allspice and pepper out, not hot enough to cook. The book gives no temperature. A low oven left off after baking, or a thermos of warm water round the bottle, does the same. Do not simmer it.
- The salt is doing workAn ounce of salt to half a pint is deliberate: with the vinegar it is what makes the sauce keep. Reducing it turns a preserve into something perishable, so refrigerate any low-salt version and use it within a few weeks.
- How to use itA teaspoon or two into a pint of gravy, stirred in at the end. Both mixtures are aggressively salty and sharp; season the dish after adding, not before.
"Store sauces" were the standing seasonings of the English kitchen from the eighteenth century onward — bottled concentrates of vinegar, spice, salt and fermented fish kept on a shelf and used to give depth to gravies, hashes and made dishes at a moment's notice. They are the direct ancestors of the commercial bottled sauces that displaced them; Worcestershire, with its anchovy, vinegar, shallot and spice, belongs to the same lineage. The word ketchup itself is generally traced to a Southeast Asian fermented-fish or soy condiment, and in Britain it attached to a range of liquors — mushroom and walnut among them, as well as oyster and anchovy — which is why an English recipe of this period can call for ketchup and port in the same breath without oddity. A cook who kept such bottles could raise a plain gravy without keeping stockpots for every flavour.