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Savory Beet
1 slice onion 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon Harvey's sauce 1/2 beet or 1 small one 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard 3 tablespoons cream 3 tablespoons milk Fry a slice of onion in butter; then mix together half a teaspoon of salt, one-half teaspoon dry mustard, one-half teaspoon Harvey's sauce, one teaspoon flour, three tablespoons cream and the same of milk, pour it over the onion in the saucepan, and boil five minutes; lastly, slice in a moderate sized boiled beet. This is to be eaten cold.
A tiny dish — a mustard-cream dressing boiled briefly and poured over sliced cooked beet, served cold. The quantities suit one or two people as a side.
- The flour is missing from the listThe ingredient list omits it, but the method calls for one teaspoon of flour. Whisk it into the cold cream and milk before they meet the hot pan, or it will lump.
- Harvey's sauceA Victorian bottled condiment based on anchovy, soy, vinegar and spices, no longer widely sold. Worcestershire is the closest common stand-in; mushroom ketchup or a soy-and-vinegar mix gives a comparable savory note without fish.
- Not strictly meatlessContains fish -- Both Harvey's sauce and Worcestershire are anchovy-based, so the dish is not fish-free; anyone avoiding fish should use mushroom ketchup instead.
- Boiling five minutesFive minutes at a full boil will reduce three tablespoons each of cream and milk to very little and risks splitting the cream against the mustard and vinegar. A gentle simmer for two to three minutes, just to cook out the flour, is enough.
- The onionOne slice, fried in butter, is left whole in the sauce. Chop it if you would rather not meet it; slice it thin either way so it softens in the short frying time.
- "Moderate sized boiled beet"Note that the ingredient list says half a beet or one small one, while the method calls for a moderate sized one; take your pick. Boil or roast it in advance, cool, then slice thin so the sauce coats every piece.
- ServingIt is meant to be eaten cold, and it improves after an hour or two in the refrigerator as the beet takes up the mustard. The sauce will thicken further as it chills; loosen with a spoonful of milk if it sets too stiff.
Harvey's sauce is the period marker here. It was one of the bottled English store sauces that stood alongside ketchup and soy on nineteenth-century sideboards — anchovy-based, sharp with vinegar and, in some recipes, shallot, and traditionally traced to an eighteenth-century innkeeper of that name, though the attribution is repeated more often than it is documented. Recipes for homemade versions appear in English household manuals well into the 1800s, and by the time this book was printed the commercial bottle was a pantry staple that a cookbook writer could assume without explanation.