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One Bayleaf (Ounce of Butter)
One ounce of Butter.
One tablespoonful of Harvey Sauce.
Half an ounce of Flour.
Half a pint of Brown Stock.
Two tablespoonfuls of Vinegar.
This is an ingredient list for a piquant brown sauce, printed without a method — the surrounding pages of such books assumed the cook knew how to build a roux-thickened sauce. The proportions are the useful part.
- The missing bay leafThe title names a bayleaf that never appears in the ingredient list. If you want it, add one bay leaf to the stock and lift it out before serving.
- Harvey's SauceA bottled English condiment of anchovy, soy, vinegar, garlic and spices, no longer generally available. A tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, or Worcestershire with a mashed anchovy fillet, is the usual stand-in.
- Half a pintImperial measure: 10 fl oz, or about 1¼ US cups. Half an ounce of flour to half a pint works out at 1 oz to the pint, the standard proportion for a pouring rather than a coating sauce.
- Brown stockBeef or veal bones roasted dark, then simmered — a good unsalted beef stock stands in. Avoid salted commercial broth, since the Harvey's substitute and the reduction both concentrate salt.
- The rouxTwice as much butter as flour means a loose roux. Cook it to a light hazel colour before the stock goes in, or the sauce tastes of raw flour, which no amount of vinegar will hide.
- The vinegarTwo tablespoons in ten ounces of stock is assertive. Add it at the end, off the boil, and taste; a long simmer with vinegar in flattens the sharpness that is the whole point of the sauce.
- YieldRoughly a cup after simmering, enough to serve alongside grilled steak, chops, kidneys or cold meat rewarmed.
Harvey's Sauce was one of the great bottled condiments of Georgian and Victorian England, sold by Lazenby's and traditionally traced to a Peter Harvey associated with an inn on the Bedfont road, though the attribution is repeated far more often than it is documented. Its anchovy-and-vinegar sharpness made it the basis of a family of "piquant" brown sauces built on the same skeleton — butter, flour, brown stock, an acid and a bought sauce for depth. The bare ingredient list with no method is not unusual in books of this kind.