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Meat or Fish Sauces: Sauce
Cardinal Sauce. 2 tablespoonfuls butter, 1 tablespoonful flour, 2 cupfuls stock, teaspoonful onion juice, 1 bay leaf.
Cardinal sauce is, as a rule, made from lobsters and colored with coral; so, if possible, purchase lobsters containing coral. Boil the lobster, open and remove the coral, and press it through a sieve. Put the butter into pan and let melt. Add flour without browning, then add stock, onion juice, and bay leaf. Stir constantly until it boils. Take out bay leaf, add salt and pepper, the coral, and a little of the red part of the lobster chopped fine.
Sauce Soubise. 3 onions, 2 tablespoonfuls butter, 1 tablespoonful flour.
Peel and chop onions, simmer with butter for three quarters of an hour, but do not let them color very much Add flour, salt, pepper, and a pinch of mace, and mix all together; moisten with a cup of fish liquor and the same quantity of hot cream or milk.
Serve in tureen.
Sauce Allemande. 4 tablespoonfuls butter, 4 tablespoonfuls flour, 2 cupfuls white stock, Yolks 3 eggs.
Melt butter and mix thoroughly with flour over a gentle fire; add stock and a little salt and pepper; stir, boil fifteen minutes, remove from fire, skim off grease carefully, add eggs mixed in a little water, and stir in with egg beater to make sauce light.
Spanish Sauce. 4 tablespoonfuls butter, 4 tablespoonfuls flour, 2 cupfuls white stock, 2½ tablespoonfuls lean raw ham, 1 carrot, 1 onion sliced, 1 stalk celery, 2 cloves.
Melt butter in saucepan, add flour, and stir over a gentle fire until nicely browned; mix with white stock, ham, carrot, sliced onion, celery, cloves, a pinch of salt and pepper; stir until beginning to boil, then simmer gently on back of stove for one hour; skim off grease before serving.
Sauce Piquante. 4 tablespoonfuls butter, 1 small carrot, 6 shallots, MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK 1 bunch savory herbs, Parsley, + bay leaf, 2 slices lean bacon, 2 cloves, 6 peppercorns, 1 blade mace, 3 allspice berries, 4 tablespoonfuls vinegar. 1 cupful stock, teaspoonful sugar, Cayenne and salt to taste.
Put the butter into saucepan with the carrot and shallots cut into small pieces, add the herbs, bay leaf, spices, and ham minced fine; let these ingredients simmer slowly until the bottom is covered with a brown glaze, keep stirring and put in remaining ingredients, simmer gently fifteen minutes, skim off every particle of fat. This is an excellent recipe when a sharp but not too acid sauce is required.
Cucumber Cream Sauce. 1 cucumber, teaspoonful salt, teaspoonful chopped parsley, teaspoonful chopped onion, 1 tablespoonful tarragon vinegar, cupful cream.
Chop cucumber, season with salt, parsley, onion, and vinegar. Mix thoroughly and drain in colander half an hour. When ready to serve, add cream beaten stiff.
Sauce Tartare. 1 cupful mayonnaise, 2 sweet pickled cucumbers, 3 olives, 1 tablespoonful chopped water cress, 1 teaspoonful capers, teaspoonful onion juice.
Stir into the mayonnaise the cucumbers, olives, water cress, capers, and onion juice.
Brown Sauce. 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 tablespoonful flour, 2 cloves, 1 bay leaf, 1 teaspoonful chopped onion, 1 teaspoonful chopped parsley. / Heat stock; blend together butter and flour, add to hot stock with cloves, bay leaf, parsley, and onion.
Cook for a few minutes. Strain, and serve hot with cannelon of beef or rolled beef.
Hollandaise Sauce. ½ cupful butter, Yolks 2 eggs, cupful boiling water, + teaspoonful salt, Dash cayenne, 1 tablespoonful lemon juice.
Cream the butter, add yolks of eggs one at a time, beating it thoroughly, then add water. Cook in a double boiler till it thickens to the consistency of a custard. The seasoning, which consists of salt, cayenne, and lemon juice, is added just before the boiler is lifted from the fire.
Bechamel Sauce. 1½ cupfuls white stock, 1 slice onion, 1 slice carrot, Bit bay leaf, Sprig parsley, 6 peppercorns, 4 tablespoonfuls butter, 4 tablespoonfuls flour, 1 cupful scalded milk, Salt and pepper.
Cook white stock twenty minutes with onion, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, and peppercorns, then strain. It should be cooked down to about 1 cupful liquor. Melt butter, add flour, add the hot sauce to scalded milk, and season.
White Mushroom Sauce. 4 tablespoonfuls butter, 1 slice carrot, 1 slice onion, Bit bay leaf, Sprig parsley, 6 peppercorns, MEAT OR FISH SAUCES 4 tablespoonfuls flour, 2 cupfuls white stock, can mushrooms, ½ teaspoonful lemon juice, Salt and pepper.
Melt butter, add carrot, onion, bay leaf, parsley, peppercorns, flour, and, slowly, white stock. Cook five minutes, remove seasonings, and add mushrooms cut in pieces. Add lemon juice, salt, and pepper.
Shrimp Sauce. 1 cupful shrimps, 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 tablespoonful flour, Salt, pepper, paprika, 1 teaspoonful anchovy paste.
Pound shrimps, skins and all, in mortar. Boil afterwards for ten minutes in a cupful water. Press the liquor through a purée strainer. Mix butter and flour to a paste; pour over it the shrimp liquor. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika; add anchovy paste. Just before serving, add six shrimps cut in inch pieces.
Drawn-Butter Egg Sauce. 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 tablespoonful flour, 1 cupful fish stock, 6 slices hard-boiled egg, Salt and pepper.
Cook together until well mixed the butter and flour. Add fish stock.
Simmer five minutes, season with salt and pepper, and serve in a tureen in which have been placed the slices of hard-boiled egg.
Thin White Sauce. 2 cupfuls milk, 2 tablespoonfuls butter, 2 tablespoonfuls flour, Pepper and salt.
Put the butter in a small saucepan, and let it melt over a slow fire. Add the flour, and blend to a paste with a wire whisk. Add the seasonings, then the scalded milk, and beat till the sauce gets creamy.
Tomato Sauce. can tomatoes, 1 slice onion, + cupful butter, 3 tablespoonfuls flour, Pepper and salt.
Cook the tomatoes with onion for ten minutes, squeeze through a potato ricer, and to the pulp add the butter and flour rubbed to a paste, also the seasoning, then beat till creamy.
Horse-Radish Sauce. 1 cupful grated horse-radish, 4 tablespoonfuls cracker, cupful cream, powdered 1 tablespoonful powdered sugar, teaspoonful mustard, 2 tablespoonfuls vinegar, 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 teaspoonful pepper.
Blend all the ingredients together, heat over boiling water, and serve with boiled beef.
Cold Horse-Radish Sauce. 3 tablespoonfuls grated horseradish, 1 tablespoonful vinegar, Dash McIlhenny's Tabasco Sauce, 1 teaspoonful salt, cupful thick cream.
Mix the horse-radish, vinegar, and seasonings, then beat in with a fork the cream, which has been whipped to a stiff froth.
Mint Sauce. + cupful sugar, cupful vinegar, 1 cupful fresh mint.
Strip the mint free from its tough leaves and stalks; chop it slightly, wash and put in the vinegar, melt the sugar in a tablespoonful boiling water, add it to the sauce, and serve cold with roast lamb.
A run of classic French and Anglo-American sauces, all built on the same two skeletons: a butter-and-flour roux loosened with stock or milk, or an emulsion of butter and egg yolk. A few of the quantities as printed have lost their fractions, so read them with judgement rather than faith.
- Missing fractionsSeveral amounts still appear as bare words — "teaspoonful onion juice" in the cardinal sauce, "teaspoonful sugar" and "+ bay leaf" in the piquante — where a half or quarter has dropped out, so supply the fraction by judgement. The Spanish sauce calls for 2½ tablespoonfuls of lean raw ham, which is what the printed page gives.
- White stockMeans an unbrowned veal or chicken stock, made from bones blanched rather than roasted, so the sauce stays pale. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in; avoid dark or roasted-bone stock in the Allemande, Bechamel and mushroom sauces or they will go muddy.
- Cardinal sauce and coralThe coral is the roe of a female lobster, black-green when raw and turning brilliant red on cooking -- that colour is the whole point of the sauce. Supermarket lobsters are rarely sold sexed, and roe is often absent; without it you have a plain veloute, and no amount of paprika replaces it.
- Soubise timingThree quarters of an hour of onions in butter is correct and should not be shortened. Keep the heat low and covered so they collapse to a pale sweet pulp; any browning turns the sauce beige and sharpens the flavour.
- HollandaiseThe creamed-butter method here is the older technique and works, but it is a custard emulsion and will split above roughly 160-170F. Keep the water beneath the double boiler at a bare tremble, never boiling, and pull the pan the moment it coats a spoon.
- Bechamel, as printedThe instruction runs short: melt the butter, cook in the flour without colour, then add the reduced stock and scalded milk together, whisking, and simmer until it thickens. The point of the recipe is the stock reduced to about one cup with the aromatics -- that is what separates this from plain white sauce.
- Canned tomatoes and mushrooms"Can tomatoes" gives no size; period cans of tomatoes ran from roughly 2 1/2 cups up to a quart, and a modern 14.5 oz can is a workable stand-in with a splash less cooking. The size of the mushroom can is likewise unstated; fresh mushrooms sauteed in the butter give a better result.
- Shrimp saucePounding shells and all in a mortar is a genuine extraction technique, not a shortcut gone wrong -- the shells hold most of the flavour. Strain hard, and add the diced shrimp at the last minute; ten minutes of boiling would make them tough.
- YieldsThe sauces built on two cupfuls of stock make roughly two cups; those built on one cupful make about half that. The cucumber cream, tartare and horse-radish sauces are smaller quantities. A tureen is specified in the recipe only for the Soubise and the drawn-butter egg sauce.
These are the sauces of the classical French repertoire as it reached American home kitchens at the turn of the twentieth century, by way of the cooking schools of Boston and New York. Soubise is generally traced to the eighteenth-century Prince de Soubise, Allemande's name is traditionally explained as the "German" sauce though the reason for it is not settled, and cardinal is conventionally said to be named for its ecclesiastical red. That a general household manual would set them beside horse-radish sauce for boiled beef and mint sauce for lamb says a good deal about the period's ambitions: the cook was apparently expected, if the books are any guide, to keep a stockpot going and to know a veloute from a bechamel, while still serving thoroughly English roasts. The cold horse-radish sauce names a brand of Tabasco outright.