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Fou Yung Sauce
Melt 2 tablespoons butter, add 1/2 slice chopped onion and 2 tablespoons bean sprouts. Add 2 tablespoons flour, smooth it with the other mixture, then add 1 cup boiling water in which a bouillon cube has been dissolved. Boil 1 minute. Add 1/2 teaspoon Soy Sauce, and salt and pepper.
A small brown gravy for egg foo young, thickened with a butter-and-flour roux and seasoned with bouillon and soy. The whole thing takes under ten minutes, and the only real decision is how long you cook the flour.
- Cook the roux longer than toldBoiling the sauce one minute is not enough to lose the raw-flour taste. Let the butter and flour bubble together for a minute before the liquid goes in, then simmer the finished sauce 3 to 5 minutes, stirring.
- "1/2 slice chopped onion"Probably half a round cut from a peeled onion, which would come to a teaspoon or so up to a tablespoon chopped, depending on how thick the slice. Either way it is a very small amount.
- Bean sproutsTwo tablespoons of fresh mung bean sprouts, chopped short. Canned sprouts were widely sold in this period and will work, though they are limp; drain and rinse them first.
- Salt from the bouillonA modern bouillon cube in one cup of water is already salty, and the soy adds more. Season at the very end, after tasting, rather than by the recipe.
- Soy sauceHalf a teaspoon in a cup of sauce gives colour and little else. You may want a teaspoon or more, and a splash of dry sherry or a few drops of sesame oil off the heat is in keeping.
- ConsistencyTwo tablespoons flour to one cup liquid gives a sauce that coats a spoon and will thicken further as it stands. Thin it with a little more stock rather than water if it sets up too stiff.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough to spoon over four egg foo young patties for two to four people.
Egg foo young and its brown gravy belong to the Chinese-American restaurant repertoire that spread through the United States alongside chop suey and chow mein in the early twentieth century. The name transliterates a Cantonese term generally understood to refer to hibiscus or lotus blossom, applied to pale, softly set egg dishes; the many English spellings -- fu yung, foo yong, fou yung here -- reflect that no standard romanisation had settled in American print. The sauce itself is not a Chinese technique at all but a plain butter-and-flour roux of the sort any American cook of the period made for creamed dishes, tinted and seasoned with bouillon and a half-teaspoon of soy.