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The Boston Cook Book
Mix vinegar, lemon juice, salt, and Worcestershire Sauce in a small bowl, and heat over hot water. Brown the butter in an omelet pan, and strain into first mixture.
A brown-butter sauce of the type served over boiled or broiled fish. The written portion gives the method only, without quantities, so treat the proportions as a matter of taste and keep the technique as the guide.
- Proportions are not statedNo amounts are given for the vinegar, lemon juice, salt, Worcestershire or butter. Any figure is an inference; season and balance to taste.
- The hinge is the butterEverything depends on taking the butter to a true nut brown and no further. The milk solids go from golden to acrid in well under a minute; pull the pan from the heat the moment the foam subsides and the solids turn the colour of hazelnut skin.
- Why an omelet panThe text gives no reason. A shallow pan with sloping sides evaporates quickly and makes the solids easy to watch; a stainless or tin-lined skillet does the same work, while a dark pan hides the colour change.
- StrainingStraining catches the browned milk solids so the finished sauce is clear. If you prefer the toasted flavour, leave them in and skip the strainer, which is the modern beurre noisette practice.
- Heat over hot waterThe acid mixture is warmed in a bowl set over hot water rather than on direct heat, which brings it up gently without reducing it and keeps the finished sauce from cooling the fish.
- ServingSauces of this kind are best made to order and spooned over the fish at once; they separate on standing.
Browned butter sharpened with vinegar or lemon is a long-established fish sauce in the European repertoire, known in French kitchens as beurre noir or, when taken only to a nut colour, beurre noisette, and served classically with skate, sole and brains. Its appearance in a Boston cookery book of the period, with Worcestershire Sauce added, suggests how far the bottled English condiment had entered the American pantry by the end of the nineteenth century.