Brown Sauce
1 small onion, chopped very fine 3 tablespoons cooking oil 1/4 cup flour 1 pint boiling water 1 teaspoon salt Cook the flour in the oil till it is a medium dark-brown color. Add the chopped onion, and cook till the onion is browned. Then stir in the boiling water. Boil one minute. Strain and add salt. The flour must be stirred almost constantly while browning, to prevent scorching.
A plain browned-flour gravy built on oil rather than meat drippings, which makes it a useful all-purpose brown sauce for cooks avoiding stock. The whole dish turns on how far you take the roux.
- The hinge: brown the flour, don't burn itA brown roux moves from tan to hazelnut to coffee in the space of a minute or two once it gets going. Keep the heat moderate and the spoon moving; the first whiff of acridness means it is scorched and the sauce will be bitter throughout.
- Timing on the rouxThe original gives no time because it assumed you would judge by color, which is still the right way to judge it; how long it takes depends entirely on your heat and pan.
- Cooking oilIn an American book of this period "cooking oil" would most likely have been cottonseed. Any neutral oil with a reasonable smoke point works; avoid extra-virgin olive oil, which turns harsh at roux temperatures.
- Boiling water, added off the heatBoiling water -- The recipe says simply to stir in the boiling water; it does not tell you to pull the pan aside. Adding the hot liquid a little at a time and stirring smooth is a sensible precaution against lumps and spatter, but that is an addition to the text, not part of it.
- Onion goes in secondBrowning the onion after the flour is deliberate: onion added at the start releases water and stalls the browning. The onion is in the pan only briefly before the water goes in, and it is strained out at the end.
- One minute is enoughA quarter cup of flour to a pint of water gives a light pouring gravy, and the starch is fully cooked by the time it has boiled a minute. Longer boiling only reduces it and thickens it further.
- Straining, and whether to botherStraining gives a smooth sauce. Leaving the onion in produces a coarser gravy with more flavor, which suits potatoes, rice or a nut roast.
- Yield and seasoningAbout two cups, enough for four to six servings. A teaspoon of salt in a pint is on the assertive side by modern habit; salt at the end and taste, and a little pepper or soy sauce deepens what is otherwise a very lean sauce.