Kettner's Book of the Table

Every food on the Victorian table gets its history, its etymology and a strong opinion — the wittiest cookery book of 1877, written in secret by a Times leader-writer and named for London's most fashionable restaurant.

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White

The use of this word is so frequent in cookery Whitebait that though it has been many times explained, it may be well to define it here again. It is no doubt often used to denote a positive whiteness produced by any pleasant pigment of almonds, milk, rice, or flour; but it means chiefly a negation-the absence of browning produced by cooking at a high temperature. This high temperature roasts; and roasting produces at once colour and flavour. A white soup, a white sauce, a white stew, is one produced at a temperature which never exceeds the boiling point, and therefore never burns or browns.

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