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Suédoise Sauce (White Sauce with Horse-Radish)
(White Sauce with Horse-Radish.) Ingredients.
Half a pint of stiff Mayonnaise.
Two tablespoonfuls of finely grated Horse-radish.
Two tablespoonfuls of freshly peeled Cucumber chopped fine.
One finely chopped Eschalot.
One teaspoonful of chopped Capers.
One ounce of chopped Lax.
Quarter of a pint of stiffly whipped Cream.
Mix the above ingredients together and set on the ice till wanted. This sauce is extremely good with hot or cold boiled fish.
A cold compound mayonnaise, thinned with whipped cream and sharpened with horseradish. The only real work is in the chopping and in keeping the sauce cold.
- The measuresHalf an imperial pint of mayonnaise is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups; the quarter pint of cream is 5 fl oz, a scant ⅔ cup. "Stiff" mayonnaise matters, since the cream will loosen it considerably.
- LaxLax is the Scandinavian word for salmon. The recipe does not specify, but in a sauce of this kind it most likely means cured or lightly smoked salmon rather than fresh. An ounce, chopped fine, is about a thin slice.
- EschalotAn older spelling of shallot. One small shallot is what is wanted here; a whole large banana shallot will dominate the horseradish.
- HorseradishFreshly grated root is what the recipe assumes and what gives the sauce its point. Bottled horseradish in vinegar can stand in, but drain it well or the mayonnaise will slacken and taste sour.
- CucumberSalt the chopped cucumber for ten minutes and pat it dry before folding it in. Unsalted, it weeps into the sauce within the hour and turns it watery.
- Order of assemblyCombine the mayonnaise with the horseradish, shallot, capers, cucumber and salmon first, then fold the whipped cream in last and lightly. Beating the cream in with everything else deflates it and you lose the light, pale body the cream is there to give.
- Raw eggMade in the period way with a hand-built mayonnaise, this sauce contains uncooked egg yolk. Use pasteurised eggs or a good commercial mayonnaise as the base if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- Keeping and yield"Set on the ice" refers to an icebox or a bowl packed in ice; the nearest modern equivalent is the coldest part of the refrigerator. Once the cream is folded in it makes upwards of a pint, enough for six to eight portions of boiled salmon, turbot or cod, and is best eaten the day it is made.
Suédoise is simply French for "Swedish", and in classical kitchen usage a sauce so named was a cold mayonnaise flavoured with horseradish — Escoffier's version adds an apple purée — the northern combination of horseradish and boiled fish being taken as characteristically Scandinavian. The chopped lax here reinforces the label. Cold sauces of this kind belonged to a French repertoire in which a plain boiled turbot or salmon was expected to arrive with a named cold sauce beside it, and where naming that sauce after a country was a quick way of signalling to the diner what the flavouring would be.