Velvet-Down
(Gouffé's receipt, slightly altered.)- Take six pounds of veal and two hens with the fillets cut off. Put them into a stewpan with a quart of stock for every pound of veal and fowl combined. Boil it; skim it; add to it two sliced onions, two carrots, a faggot of sweetherbs, a little salt, mignonette pepper and sugar; and simmer all till the meat is cooked, when the stock should be strained through a napkin and freed from fat. Mix, without browning, three-quarters of a pound of clarified butter with the same quantity of flour; add the stock to it; stir it on the fire till it boils; then simmer it on the stove corner for two hours to reduce it to a cullis; get rid of all grease, and pass it through a tammy.
Mock Velvet-down. - Practically, this is a variation of what is called white-wine sauce, used with fish. One way of making it has been already described in treating of the Sole au vin blanc and the white Matelote, in both of which the thickening is produced by yolk of egg. In this case the thickening is made with white roux, and the result more nearly approaches in character to velvet-down; while at the same time the white wine in it gives it a special distinction. Mix together on the fire, without browning, four ounces of butter and four of flour. Moisten it with half a pint of plain white broth or of fish broth, and with another half-pint of French white wine. Add to it a chopped shalot, an onion, a faggot of sweet-herbs, some salt, and a little nutmeg. Boil it rapidly for fifteen minutes, so as to reduce it well, but taking care not to brown it in the least. Pass it through a tammy, and it is ready.
Venison