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Caper Sauce
1/3 cup margarine 3 tablespoons flour 1/2 teaspoon salt cayenne 1 1/2 cups broth or beef bouillon 1/2 cup capers Melt shortening, add flour mixed with seasonings, cook smooth, add the liquid small amount at a time. Cook till smooth, stirring constantly. When done, add the capers, which have been drained from their liquor.
A plain flour-thickened velvet sauce, made with broth rather than milk, finished with drained capers. It comes together in under ten minutes and the only real skill is in the roux.
- Cook the roux before the liquid"Cook smooth" means letting the flour and fat bubble together a minute or two so the raw starch taste cooks off. Do it over medium heat and stop before it colours; this is a white sauce, not a brown one.
- Add liquid graduallyThe instruction to add broth "small amount at a time" is the hinge of the recipe. Pour it in all at once into a hot roux and you get lumps that no amount of stirring will fix. Whisk each addition to a smooth paste before the next.
- Cayenne quantityThe original lists cayenne with no measure, which in practice most likely means a pinch. Start with an eighth of a teaspoon or less; it should sharpen the sauce, not announce itself.
- Margarine and "shortening"The ingredient list says margarine and the method says shortening; "shortening" was often used loosely for solid fat generally. Butter can be used instead here.
- Broth or bouillonModern cubes and concentrates are considerably saltier than the homemade broth assumed here. Taste before adding the half teaspoon of salt, and consider leaving it out entirely.
- Capers go in off the heatHalf a cup is a generous amount. Drain them well and stir them in at the end; simmering capers dulls their brine-sharpness, which is the whole point of the sauce.
- Consistency and yieldThree tablespoons flour to a cup and a half of liquid gives a medium sauce that coats a spoon. It makes roughly two cups, which would serve several people alongside boiled mutton, lamb, tongue or poached fish.
Caper sauce belongs to the long British tradition of serving boiled mutton or lamb with something sharp, and it travelled into American cookbooks as a standard entry in the white-sauce family: melt fat, cook flour, add liquid, then vary the finish. Capers themselves are the pickled flower buds of Capparis spinosa, a Mediterranean shrub, and their salt-and-vinegar cure kept them shelf-stable enough to be shipped and bottled. The use of broth rather than milk here marks it as a sauce meant for meat, and the margarine in the ingredient list points to a period when household cookery had accepted substitute fats.