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YACHT SAUCE (a la Monico)
Mix a tea-spoonful of curry paste, the same of rice flour, and a salt-spoonful of saffron-powder with half a pint of milk; put the mixture in a pan with a table-spoonful of grated ham, a large onion chopped, and a green capsicum cut small; boil till soft, then rub through a sieve. Put back into the pan, with seasoning to taste, half a gill of cream, a table-spoonful of lemon juice, and a little more hot milk. Serve with any kind of cooked vegetables or fish; or re-heat cold fish in the sauce, which is very appetising.
A late-Victorian curried cream sauce, thickened with rice flour rather than roux and finished off the boil. Nothing in it is difficult, but several of the measures and one of the ingredients need translating.
- The measuresHalf a pint of milk is 10 imperial fluid ounces, about 1¼ US cups; half a gill of cream is 2½ fl oz, a scant ⅓ cup. A salt-spoonful is roughly a quarter teaspoon.
- Add the cream and lemon off the heatThe sauce is boiled only in its first stage, before sieving. Once the cream and lemon juice go in, keep it below a simmer or the acid and heat together will split it.
- Curry paste, not powderVictorian curry paste was a commercial product — spices worked into oil with vinegar, and in some formulations tamarind or anchovy. A mild jarred curry paste is the nearest thing; curry powder will work but gives a drier, dustier result and wants a moment's frying in butter first.
- Saffron powderPowdered saffron sold in this period was frequently cut with turmeric or safflower. A good pinch of saffron threads, crushed and steeped in a spoonful of the warm milk, does the job with more perfume.
- Green capsicumIn British books of this date capsicum usually means a fresh green chilli rather than a sweet bell pepper. One small mild chilli, seeded, matches the intended heat; a bell pepper gives a sweeter, blander sauce.
- Rice flourIt thickens without gluten and gives a slightly grainy, clean-tasting body. Slake it cold into the milk with the curry paste, as directed, or it will lump on contact with heat.
- Rubbing through a sieveA blender does this in seconds, though a pass through a fine sieve afterwards still improves the texture, since the onion and ham leave fibres behind.
- Yield and useAbout 1½ cups, enough for four as a sauce for fish or vegetables. Thin with hot milk to coating consistency; it thickens noticeably as it stands.
The tag à la Monico points at Monico's, the Piccadilly Circus restaurant and café that was a fixture of London dining from the 1870s onward — restaurant names were routinely attached to sauces in this way, sometimes by the kitchen that invented them and sometimes by a compiler borrowing the prestige. What the "yacht" in the title refers to is not stated in the recipe, whose last line simply recommends the sauce for reheating cold fish. Its curry paste, saffron and capsicum belong squarely to the Anglo-Indian strain in late Victorian British cooking, where a spoonful of curry paste had become a standard seasoning agent — closer in function to Worcestershire sauce than to any Indian dish.