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Pepper and Salt (One gill of White Stock)
One gill of White Stock.
Two gills of Brown Sauce.
One dessertspoonful of Anchovy Essence.
A pinch of castor Sugar.
This is a compound sauce given in the shorthand of a professional kitchen: the ingredients only, with the method assumed. Combine the stock and brown sauce, bring to a bare simmer and reduce slightly, then finish off the heat with the anchovy essence and sugar and season with pepper and salt.
- The hinge: add the anchovy lastAnchovy essence is already fully seasoned and turns harsh and metallic if boiled down. Stir it in once the sauce is off the boil, then taste before adding salt at all.
- GillsIn a British book of this period a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz or roughly 140-150 ml. So about 150 ml white stock to 300 ml brown sauce, some 450 ml before any reduction; the recipe does not say how far to reduce.
- White stockA light unroasted stock of veal or chicken bones with onion, carrot and celery, no colour taken. Unsalted commercial chicken stock is the closest shortcut; anything dark or heavily seasoned will unbalance the sauce.
- Brown sauceNot bottled brown sauce. This means the kitchen's espagnole or demi-glace: a brown roux-thickened stock, already simmered and strained. If you are not making one, a good demi-glace reduction stands in.
- Anchovy essenceA thin Victorian anchovy extract, saltier and more fluid than modern paste. Use about two teaspoons of anchovy paste loosened with a little stock, or a scant teaspoon of colatura, and adjust upward by taste.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. The pinch is there to round off the salt and acid of the essence, not to sweeten; it should not be detectable in the finished sauce.
- Where the seasoning comes inDespite the title, no pepper or salt appears in the list. Grind the pepper in at the end and use it generously, since it is the sauce's signature; hold back on salt until after the anchovy.
- Yield and serviceSomething over 400 ml before reduction, enough for about four portions. A sauce this strongly seasoned suits grilled or fried oily fish such as mackerel or herring, or broiled steaks, rather than delicate poached white fish.
Nineteenth-century professional cookery worked from a small set of mother sauces, and books of this kind list the variations as bare formulae because the cook was assumed to know the foundations already. This is a brown-sauce derivative sharpened with anchovy, a favourite Victorian trick for pairing a dark sauce with strong-flavoured fish; anchovy essence was a staple bottled seasoning, sold under names like Burgess's and used much as Worcestershire sauce is now. The name is often taken to refer simply to the aggressive seasoning, though "pepper and salt" was also common Victorian usage for a grey-flecked tweed, and colour may have suggested it; neither reading is documented in the book itself.