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White Sauce for Fish
Mince two anchovies, and put them into a delicately clean saucepan with a glassful of light wine, a glassful of vinegar, and an onion stuck with one clove. Simmer all gently together till the anchovies are dissolved, then strain the liquor. Mix a dessert-spoonful of flour smoothly with a slice of fresh butter in a saucepan; cook thoroughly, then add a quarter of a pint of milk or cream. Stir the sauce over a gentle fire for a few minutes till it thickens, lift it from the fire, and add the strained liquor. Or, mix half an ounce of butter in a saucepan with an ounce of flour; stir in half a pint of cream or milk, two table-spoonfuls of mushroom ketchup, a tea-spoonful of essence of anchovy, and a little cayenne. Stir the sauce over the fire for a minute or two, and serve.
Two versions of the same idea: a béchamel sharpened with anchovy and acid. The first builds its flavouring from whole anchovies, the second takes a shortcut through the bottled cupboard.
- The hinge: add the acid off the heatThe wine-and-vinegar reduction goes in after the sauce has thickened and left the fire, exactly as written. Boiling a milk sauce with that much vinegar in it will make it grainy or split.
- A glassfulGenuinely ambiguous. A Victorian wine glass ran roughly 2 to 4 fl oz; assume about 3 fl oz each of wine and vinegar and taste the strained liquor before you commit it all.
- Other measuresA quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz in imperial measure, half a pint is 10 fl oz. A dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons. "A slice of fresh butter" is left undefined; around half an ounce is a reasonable reading, which gives somewhat more butter than flour.
- AnchoviesProbably salt-packed anchovies, the usual form in the period, which need a rinse and will dissolve readily in the simmering liquor. Oil-packed fillets work but are milder; two fillets is a light hand, four is closer to the intent.
- Essence of anchovyA bottled anchovy preparation, generally thinner than modern anchovy paste. Use about half a teaspoon of paste where a teaspoon of essence is called for, and hold back on salt entirely until the end.
- Mushroom ketchupStill sold in Britain, and worth seeking out: a thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquid, not a thick tomato condiment. Mushroom soy or a dash of Worcestershire gives a comparable savoury depth if none is to hand.
- The second version's rouxAn ounce of flour to half an ounce of butter is flour-heavy and will taste pasty unless cooked properly. Give it a good two or three minutes over low heat without letting it colour, and expect a noticeably thicker sauce than the first version.
- YieldNeither version makes much. The first gives roughly a cup once the liquor is in, the second a little more — enough for four modest portions of poached or fried fish.
Anchovy has flavoured English fish sauces since long before Cassell's, and by the 1880s the pattern here was standard: a flour-and-butter sauce loosened with milk or cream, then pointed up with something salty and something sour. The two versions on this page mark a real change in the Victorian kitchen. The first is the older method, extracting flavour from whole salted anchovies with wine, vinegar and a clove-stuck onion — slow, and dependent on the cook's judgement. The second reaches for bottled essence of anchovy and mushroom ketchup, both mass-produced and widely advertised by the middle of the century, and is done in minutes. Mushroom ketchup was the general-purpose savoury seasoning of English cookery before tomato ketchup displaced it, and its appearance in a fish sauce is entirely ordinary for the period. That Cassell's prints both, without preferring either, is characteristic of a dictionary written for households that might have a trained cook or might have a single maid-of-all-work.