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CHAPTER X: Sauce
HOW TO ADD YOLKS OF EGG TO A SAUCE Any of these sauces may be enriched by adding yolks of eggs or butter. The yolks, well beaten, will curdle, if they be stirred into the sauce while it is boiling. Wait until the sauce is finished and it is time to serve it. Have it standing in boiling water, or on some part of the range where it will not boil. Put a few spoonfuls into the egg, mix thoroughly, then stir into the rest of the sauce. Continue to stir until the sauce thickens a little, which shows that the egg is cooked. Then serve at once.
DRAWN BUTTER SAUCE 1/3 cup of butter 1/4 teaspoonful of pepper 2 tablespoonfuls of flour 1 cup of cold water 1/4 teaspoonful of salt Melt half the butter in a small saucepan; add the flour and seasonings and cook until frothy; add the water and stir constantly until the mixture thickens and boils; let boil three or four minutes, then gradually beat in the rest of the butter, a little at a time.
CAPER SAUCE (For boiled lamb) Prepare a drawn butter sauce, using lamb broth or water as the liquid. When ready to serve add one or two tablespoonfuls of capers drained from the liquid in the bottle. A teaspoonful of lemon juice may be added if desired. EGG SAUCE (For boiled fish) To a cup of drawn butter sauce add a hard-cooked egg, cut in thin slices or chopped fine.
MOCK HOLLANDAISE SAUCE (For boiled and baked fish, cauliflower, etc.) 1 tablespoonful of butter 1/2 cup of white stock 1 tablespoonful of flour Yolks of 2 eggs 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 1/4 cup of butter 1/4 teaspoonful of pepper Juice of 1/2 a lemon Use the butter, flour, seasonings and stock in making a sauce in the usual manner. The stock should be flavored with onion, etc. Cream the four tablespoonfuls of butter and beat the yolks into it, then gradually beat the mixture into the sauce. Finish with the juice of half a lemon. BROWN SAUCE There is another general variety of sauce that differs from the white sauce principally in color. The liquid in this sauce may be vegetable puree, fish, or meat broth, but it is usually beef broth made dark by browning the ingredients of which it is made in hot fat. For this sauce, cook the fat until browned but not burned; add, for a high-flavored sauce, one or two slices of onion, two slices of carrot, a bit of parsley and half a stalk of celery, all chopped rather coarse; let these brown in the fat, stirring constantly that they may not burn; now add three level tablespoonfuls of flour, and the usual quantity of salt and pepper and continue stirring and cooking until the flour assumes a reddish brown tint; then add the cold liquid, and stir and cook until smooth and boiling, then strain. You will note that the proportions remain the same as for the white sauce, save that more flour is used. By the long cooking in the hot fat the conversion of the starch in the flour is carried farther than in the white sauce and the thickening property of the starch is lessened, thus more flour is required.
For a brown tomato sauce proceed as in making the brown sauce, but use tomato puree as the liquid.
A set of linked sauces built on one flour-and-butter base, written for a household cooking small quantities. Everything here still works; the vocabulary is what has drifted.
- The hinge: never boil the yolksThe opening note is the most important line on the page. Once yolks go in, the sauce must sit over hot water or on a cool corner of the stove and never return to a boil, or it will scramble. Temper by stirring a few spoonfuls of hot sauce into the beaten yolks first, then return the mixture to the pan.
- "Drawn butter" is not clarified butterIn American books of this period drawn butter means a thin flour-thickened butter sauce, essentially a white sauce made with water instead of milk. It is not the melted, clarified butter served with shellfish today.
- The "usual" proportionsThe brown sauce refers back to a white sauce given earlier in the chapter, which is not reproduced here; the standard household ratio of the period was roughly a tablespoon each of butter and flour to a cup of liquid, doubled for a thick sauce. The brown version calls for three level tablespoonfuls of flour, more than the white, because browning the roux breaks down some of the starch and weakens its thickening power, exactly as the text explains.
- White stockAn unbrowned veal or chicken stock, ideally unsalted. A good low-sodium chicken broth stands in; if you use a salted commercial one, cut the added salt back and taste before finishing.
- Cold liquid into hot rouxThe instruction to add cold liquid is deliberate and still the surest route to a smooth sauce in a small pan. Add it in stages, whisking each addition smooth before the next.
- Cook the flour out"Until frothy" for the white base means a minute or two, long enough to lose the raw taste. For the brown sauce, "reddish brown" can take ten minutes or more of near-constant stirring over moderate heat; the line between browned and burned is short and a scorched roux must be thrown away.
- Capers and the lemonModern capers come packed in brine or salt. Drain brined ones as directed; rinse salt-packed capers well before adding. Add the lemon juice off the heat at the very end.
- Mock hollandaise1/4 cup of butter is the four tablespoonfuls named lower in the method; the two figures agree. Because the yolks are set into a cooked flour base rather than emulsified over direct heat, this version is far harder to break than a true hollandaise.
- YieldThe drawn butter and mock hollandaise each make roughly a cup or a little more; the brown sauce gives no liquid quantity, so scale it to the flour. The drawn butter and brown sauces reheat gently; any sauce finished with yolks should be made at the last minute and not reheated.
Drawn butter sauce was a workhorse of nineteenth-century American cookery, the sauce poured over boiled fish, boiled fowl and plain vegetables in households that had no stock pot going and no French-trained cook. Its variations here are familiar ones: capers with boiled lamb or mutton, chopped hard-cooked egg with boiled fish. The "mock" hollandaise reflects a common compromise of the period, stabilising the yolks in a flour-thickened base rather than emulsifying them over direct heat. The book's explanation of why browned flour thickens less is worth noting on its own: cookbooks written around 1900 increasingly borrowed the language of the domestic-science movement, and telling a home cook about the conversion of starch, rather than simply ordering her to use more flour, was a mark of that new teaching style.