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Watercress Sauce
Ingredients.
Quarter of a pound of Breadcrumbs.
Quarter of a pint of Cream.
A bunch of Watercress.
A few drops of Tarragon Vinegar.
Soak the breadcrumbs in the cream for a quarter of an hour; well wash and pick over the watercress, using the leaves only, not the thick stem stalks; pound them in the mortar with the cream and breadcrumbs, add a few drops of tarragon vinegar, pass through a sieve, and serve.
A cold, uncooked bread-and-cream sauce of the kind Victorian kitchens sent out with salmon, trout or cold fish generally. It comes together in minutes once the crumbs have softened.
- The measuresA quarter of a pint imperial is 5 fl oz, about 140 ml or a generous half cup. A quarter pound of breadcrumbs is 4 oz (115 g), which is roughly two loosely packed cups of fresh crumbs.
- That ratio is very thickFour ounces of crumbs to five of cream gives a stiff paste rather than a pouring sauce. Hold back some of the crumbs, or loosen with additional cream after sieving, depending on whether you want a spooning sauce or something nearer a thick coating.
- Crumbs mean fresh crumbsVictorian breadcrumbs here are soft white crumbs from the inside of a day-old loaf, not the dry toasted kind sold for coating. Dried crumbs will drink the cream and turn to putty.
- Mortar to machineA food processor does the pounding in about thirty seconds. Pulse rather than run it continuously, or the cream thickens and the sauce takes on a buttery texture.
- Leaves only, and dry themThe instruction to discard the thick stalks is worth following: they are fibrous and stringy and will not break down. Spin or pat the leaves dry, since wash water thins the sauce unpredictably.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and easily made by steeping a few sprigs in white wine vinegar for a week. A few drops is right; more will curdle the appearance of the cream and flatten the peppery watercress.
- The sievePushing the purée through a fine sieve is what makes this a high-class sauce rather than a rough one. It removes leaf fibre and gives an even pale green. Skip it and the sauce is still good, just coarser.
- Season and serveThe original gives no salt; the sauce will want it, plus pepper, added after sieving and tasted. The recipe does not specify a serving temperature, but a raw bread-and-cream mixture is best cold or at room temperature rather than heated. Yields roughly one to one and a half cups, enough for about six as an accompaniment.
- Make it close to servingCut watercress loses its colour and pepper within a few hours. Prepare no more than a couple of hours ahead and keep it covered and cold.
Bread-thickened sauces are among the oldest in the English repertoire, descending from the medieval practice of using soaked crumbs where a later cook would use flour, butter or egg yolk; bread sauce for game birds is the survivor most people still recognise. Watercress became a cheap and abundant urban food in nineteenth-century Britain, grown in the chalk-stream beds of Hampshire, Dorset and Kent and carried into London by rail to be sold by street hawkers by the bunch, which is why a Victorian cookery book can call for "a bunch of watercress" and expect to be understood. Its sharp mustard-oil bite made it a standing partner for fish and cold meat, and here it is treated exactly as a professional kitchen of the period would treat any green: pounded in the mortar, passed through a sieve, and finished with a flavoured vinegar rather than lemon. Tarragon vinegar was a French touch long since taken up in English kitchens, where it appears in the cookery books well before the end of the century, and the mortar and hair sieve it is used alongside were standard equipment in ordinary Victorian households.