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Twelve Peppercorns (Half a gill of Whipped Cream)
Half a gill of Whipped Cream.
Salt. Grated Nutmeg.
Peel the cucumber very thinly, cut it up into pieces and put in a stewpan; cover it with water, add salt, and let it boil till tender. Then strain off the water and rub it through a fine sieve.
Return it to the stewpan, moisten with half a pint of stock, and let it simmer to reduce.
Next prepare a Béchamel, i.e. melt the butter in a stewpan, peel and slice the onion and carrot, add this, and the bayleaf, peppercorns and parsley.
Let this fry for four minutes, stir in the flour, and let it cook for a few seconds without allowing it to colour. Have the milk boiling and stir in gently. Add more milk or hot stock if too thick.
Simmer for fifteen minutes, skim, and pass through a tammy cloth or very fine strainer.
Mix about half or more of this to the cucumber purée, season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Just before required for table stir in the whipped cream.
The sauce must be well whisked, and must on no account be allowed to boil again, or else it may go oily. The smallest suspicion of spinach greening added will give it an appropriate tint.
A cucumber sauce built on a flavoured béchamel, meant to go beside boiled or poached fish. The printed page carries only the tail of the ingredient list, so several quantities have to be reconstructed from the method.
- The missing ingredient listOnly the cream, salt, nutmeg and the twelve peppercorns of the title survive here; the cucumber, butter, flour, onion, carrot, bayleaf, parsley and milk are named in the method without amounts. For the béchamel, a working ratio of about 1 oz butter to 1 oz flour to 1 pint milk will give something like the described consistency. Half a pint of stock is specified for the purée; no cucumber quantity is given.
- A gillA British gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, about 5 fl oz. Half a gill is roughly 2½ fl oz, or a scant third of a US cup, measured before whipping.
- Do not let it boilThis is the hinge. Once the whipped cream is in, the emulsion is fragile and reheating will break it, which is what the author means by going oily. Warm gently, whisk, and send it out.
- Reducing the cucumberCucumber is mostly water, and the sieved purée loosened with stock will be thin. Reduce it hard over moderate heat before the béchamel goes in, or the finished sauce will slacken on the plate.
- Tammy clothA tammy was a loosely woven worsted cloth through which sauces were wrung to force them smooth. A fine chinois, or a conical strainer lined with muslin, does the same job.
- Peppercorns and aromaticsThe onion, carrot, bayleaf, peppercorns and parsley are infusion only and are all strained out at the tammy stage.
- Spinach greeningVert d'épinards was made by pounding raw spinach, pressing out the juice and setting the colour over gentle heat, then using the green solids as a dye. A few drops of blanched-spinach purée pressed through a sieve gives the same tint. Use very little, as the author says, or the sauce tastes of spinach.
- Yield and servingWith the béchamel made up as suggested above, this would give something in the region of a pint of sauce, though no quantity is stated. It suits poached fish, and being finished with cream off the heat it can only be served warm rather than hot.
Cucumber as a hot sauce rather than a salad is well represented in the classical French repertoire that British professional cookery drew on in the later nineteenth century, though hot cucumber sauces also appear in earlier British books; the method here is textbook: a béchamel infused with onion, carrot, bayleaf, parsley and peppercorns, passed through a tammy, then combined with a vegetable purée and finished with cream off the heat. The instruction to add a suspicion of spinach greening is characteristic of the period, and professional kitchens are known to have kept prepared vert d'épinards for tinting sauces. Cucumber's traditional pairing with salmon persists in the cold kitchen, in sliced cucumber and in cucumber-flecked mayonnaise; this is the hot version of the same instinct, using the vegetable's mildness to lighten a rich fish rather than to cut it.