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Another (Chop anchovies having first)
Chop 24 anchovies, having first boned them; put to them 10 shallots cut small, and a handful of scraped horse-radish, of an ounce of mace, a quart of white wine, a pint of water, and the same quantity of red wine; a lemon cut into slices, 1/2 a pint of anchovy liquor, 12 cloves, and the same number of peppercorns. Boil them together till it comes to a quart, then strain it off, cover it close, and keep it in a cold dry place.
Two spoonsful of it will be sufficient for a pound of butter. It is a good sauce for boiled fowls, or, in the room of gravy, lowering it with hot water, and thickening it with a piece of butter rolled in flour.
Fish Sauce.
Take 1 pound of anchovies, a quart of claret, of a pint of white wine vinegar, 1/2 an ounce of cloves and mace, 2 races of ginger sliced, a little black pepper, the peel of a lemon, a piece of horseradish, a large onion, a bunch of thyme and savory; set all these over a slow fire to simmer an hour, then strain it through a sieve; when cold put it in a bottle with the spice, but not the herbs. To a large coffee-cupful cold, put a pound of butter; stir it over the fire till it is as thick as cream; shake the bottle when used, and put no water to the butter.
Cream Sauce for a Hare.
Run the cream over the hare or venison just before frothing it, and catch it in a dish; boil it up with the yolks of two eggs, some onion, and a piece of butter rolled in flour and salt. Half a pint of cream is the proportion for two eggs.
Apple Sauce.
Pare and core tart apples, cut them in slices, rinse and put them in an earthern stewpan, set them on the fire, do not stir them until they burst and are done; mash them with a spoon, and when perfectly cool sweeten with white sugar to taste.
Sweet Sauce.
Mix 2 glasses of red wine, one of vinegar, 3 teaspoonsful of cullis, a bit of sugar, 1 sliced onion, a little cinnamon, and a laurel-leaf; boil them a quarter of an hour.
Nun's Butter.
Four ounces of butter; six ounces of sugar; as much wine as the butter will take. Beat the butter and sugar together, and gradually add the wine and a little nutmeg.
Brown Sauce.
Mix together one tablespoonful of moist sugar,
Six short sauces run together in one block, all of them built on the eighteenth-century habit of making a strong essence and letting butter carry it to the plate. The two anchovy sauces are concentrates, not sauces to be spooned as they are.
- The hinge: butter, not waterThe second sauce is finished by stirring the cold essence into a pound of butter over the fire "till it is as thick as cream"; the first simply says two spoonfuls will do for a pound of butter (though it may also be let down with hot water and thickened with floured butter when used in place of gravy). Keep the pan below a simmer — if the butter breaks you get an oily, separated sauce — and note that the second recipe says to put no water to the butter.
- Damaged measurements"of an ounce of mace" and "of a pint of white wine vinegar" read as though a fraction (most likely ½) has dropped out in this printing. Treat both as ambiguous rather than guessing high, since a full ounce of mace in a quart of finished essence would dominate everything.
- Anchovies and anchovy liquorThese are salt-packed anchovies, boned by hand, not the oil-tinned fillets — 24 salted fish is roughly 4-6 oz of flesh. "Anchovy liquor" is the brine from the cask; strained brine from a jar of salted anchovies, or a little fish sauce, occupies the same place.
- Races of gingerA race is a whole root or hand of ginger, so two races sliced means ginger in the root, whole and unground, not powdered.
- Cullis and laurelCullis (from coulis) is a strained, reduced brown meat stock used as a thickener and flavour base; well-reduced veal or beef stock stands in. A laurel-leaf is a bay leaf, and "moist sugar" in the unfinished Brown Sauce is soft light brown sugar.
- Cream sauce for hareCream is poured over the roasting hare and the enriched drippings caught beneath, then bound with yolks. The receipt says to boil it up, but with yolks in the pan gentle heat and constant stirring are safer, as a hard boil will curdle it. Half a pint of cream to two yolks is the stated proportion.
- Apple sauceNo added water beyond the rinsing the recipe calls for, and no sugar until the fruit is off the heat and cool; sugar added early keeps the slices from collapsing. "Do not stir until they burst" means a low flame and a heavy pan; an earthenware stewpan can be replaced with any non-reactive saucepan.
- Keeping the essencesA quart of reduced anchovy essence "in a cold dry place" meant a cellar or larder. Bottle it, refrigerate it, and use it within a few weeks; it is a cooked condiment, not a shelf-stable preserve, and it carries no measured salt or acid to make it one.
- Nun's butterIn effect a hard sauce for puddings: 4 oz butter to 6 oz sugar, beaten, with wine worked in gradually to whatever quantity the butter will take. Add the wine slowly or the mixture splits.
Sauces like these are often compared to Roman garum: a salted-fish concentrate, spiced and reduced, kept in a bottle and used a spoonful at a time. Through the eighteenth century such preparations were called ketchups or essences, anchovy, walnut and mushroom being among the commonest, and the commercial bottled sauces that displaced them — Worcestershire among them, sold from the later 1830s — belong to the same tradition. The entries here arrive stacked one after another with no headings of their own, in the manner of a large compiled receipt-book. The presence of a cream sauce for hare and an apple sauce in the same breath is a fair picture of the period's sauce cupboard: a few strong bottled bases for fish and fowl, and simple fresh accompaniments made the day they were wanted.