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Brown Mushroom Sauce (Tablespoons butter slice)
3 tablespoons butter 1 slice carrot 1 slice onion 1 tablespoon lean raw ham, finely chopped 5 tablespoons flour 1 1/4 cups brown stock 1/2 lb. mushrooms 1 cup cold water 1 teaspoon beef extract Salt Pepper Cook butter with vegetables and ham until brown, add flour, and when well browned add stock, gradually, then strain. Clean mushroom stems, break in pieces, cover with water, and cook slowly until stock is reduced to one-third cup. Strain, and add to sauce with beef extract and seasonings. Just before serving add mushroom caps peeled, cut in slices lengthwise, and sauted in butter five minutes.
A classic brown sauce built on a dark roux, with mushroom flavour drawn twice — once from a stem infusion, once from sauteed caps. It makes roughly two cups.
- Brown the roux properlyThe whole character of the sauce is in how far you take the butter, vegetables and ham, then the flour. Aim for a deep hazelnut colour over medium-low heat, stirring often; a pale roux gives a thin, floury sauce. Five tablespoons flour to three of butter is a stiff paste, so work it and watch it closely.
- Beef extractThis means a concentrated meat paste of the Bovril or Liebig type. A teaspoon of modern beef base or demi-glace concentrate does the same job, but taste before adding salt — most are heavily salted.
- Brown stockA long-simmered stock from roasted beef or veal bones. Unsalted commercial beef stock works; if using something pale, reducing it by a third deepens the colour and body.
- The stem infusionThe stems from half a pound of mushrooms, covered with the cup of water and reduced to a third of a cup, will take roughly 20-30 minutes at a bare simmer. Since the half pound is caps and stems together, expect only a modest quantity of stems unless you save trimmings.
- Peeling the capsPeriod cooks peeled the thin skin from cultivated mushrooms for a paler, neater slice. It is unnecessary with today's mushrooms; wipe them and slice.
- Five minutes for the capsThat is enough to soften but not to drive off their water. Saute them in a hot pan in a single layer so they colour rather than steam, and add them at the last moment so they keep some texture.
- Strain twiceThe recipe strains the sauce after the stock goes in and strains the mushroom liquor separately. Both matter: the first removes the carrot, onion and ham, the second any grit from the stems.
- ServingMeant for grilled or roasted beef, steaks, and croquettes. It reheats gently but will thicken; loosen with a spoonful of stock.
Brown mushroom sauce is the Anglo-American household descendant of the French sauce espagnole and its mushroom variants — a brown roux, a meat stock, and aromatics cooked down and strained. The slice of carrot, slice of onion and spoonful of raw ham are the classic mirepoix reduced to domestic scale, and the beef extract stands in for the long-reduced glaze a professional kitchen would have had on hand. Commercial meat extracts, sold from the later nineteenth century onward, were exactly what let a home cook approximate a restaurant sauce without keeping a stockpot going for days. The instruction to save and simmer the stems while sauteing only the caps reflects a period habit of thrift that is still good practice: the stems carry plenty of flavour and far less of the texture worth preserving.