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Lemon Sauce (for Boiled Fowl)
INGREDIENTS for sufficient for a pair of butter. AVERAGE COST, 4d.
Cut the lemon into very thin slices and LEMON SAUCE. these again into very small dice. Have ready pint of melted butter, put in the lemon; let it just simmer, but not boil and pour it over the fowls.
TIME.-1 minute to simmer.
Lemon Sauce, White (for Fowls, Fricassees, &c.). - INGREDIENTS for sufficient for pair of fowls or turkeys. pint of cream, the rind and juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 teaspoonful of whole white pepper, 1 sprig of lemon thyme, 3 oz. of butter, 1 dessertspoonful of flour, 1 teacupful of white stock; salt to taste. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 8d.
Put the cream into a very clean saucepan (a lined one is best), with the lemonpeel, pepper and thyme and let these infuse for 1/2 hour, when simmer gently for a few minutes, or until there is a nice flavour of lemon. Strain it and add a thickening of butter and flour in the above proportions; stir this well in and put in the lemon-juice at the moment of serving; mix the stock with the cream and add a little salt. This sauce should not boil after the cream and stock are mixed together.
TIME.-Altogether, hour.
Note.-Where the expense of the cream is objected to, milk may be substituted for it. In this case, an additional dessertspoonful, or rather more, of flour must be added.
Lemon Sauce (for Sweet Puddings). -INGREDIENTS for sauce for large pudding. The rind and juice of 1 lemon, 1 tablespoonful of flour, 1 oz. of butter, 1 large wineglassful of sherry, 1 wineglassful of water, sugar to taste, the yolks of 4 eggs.
AVERAGE COST, 10d.
Rub the rind of the lemon on to some lumps of sugar; squeeze out the juice and strain it; put the butter and flour into a saucepan, stir them over the fire and when of a pale brown, add the wine, water and strained lemon-juice. Crush the lumps of sugar that were rubbed on the lemon; stir these into the sauce, which should be very sweet. When these ingredients are well mixed and the sugar is melted, put in the beaten yolks of 4 eggs; keep stirring the sauce until it thickens, when serve. not, on any account, allow it to boil, or it will curdle and be entirely spoiled.
TIME.-Altogether, 15 minutes.
Do
Three lemon sauces in sequence: a plain diced-lemon butter sauce for boiled fowl, a richer white cream version, and a sweet egg-thickened sauce for puddings. All three share one hinge — none of them may boil.
- Never let them boilThe recipe insists on no boiling in all three cases; the pudding sauce, thickened with four egg yolks, will curdle outright if it does, and the cream-and-stock sauce is expressly not to boil once mixed. Hold everything at a bare shiver, around 180F, and pull the pudding sauce off the heat as soon as it coats the spoon.
- "Melted butter" is a sauce, not butterIn Victorian usage melted butter means a flour-thickened butter sauce: butter and a small quantity of flour worked together and let down with water or light stock. Plain liquid butter with lemon dice in it is not what the first recipe intends.
- MeasuresA teacupful is about 6 fl oz; a wineglassful about 2 fl oz. British pints are 20 fl oz, so a pint of cream is roughly 2 1/2 US cups.
- Lemon thymeOrdinary thyme plus a strip of extra lemon zest stands in well. Use a single small sprig — a long infusion in warm cream pulls out more than you expect.
- Whole white pepperWhole peppercorns are used because the cream is strained; do not substitute ground pepper, which will cloud and coarsen the sauce.
- Rubbing sugar on the lemonDragging sugar lumps over the peel captures the oils. Modern equivalent: zest the lemon finely into the sugar and rub it between your fingers until damp and fragrant.
- The milk substitutionThe note is sound — milk plus an extra dessertspoonful or so of flour gives a serviceable sauce, though it wants slightly longer cooking to lose the raw-flour taste.
- YieldEach of the savoury sauces is given as sufficient for a pair of fowls or turkeys. The pudding sauce is for one large pudding; it is best made in the last quarter hour before serving and not reheated.
Lemon sauce belonged to the era when a boiled fowl was a standard dinner dish rather than an oddity — gently poached, pale, and in need of something sharp to lift it. Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management and its later expansions catalogue dozens of such sauces, arranged so a cook could match a sauce to whatever meat had come into the house, with average costs printed alongside for the mistress checking the books. The three sauces here show the ladder of expense plainly: a few pence for diced lemon in a flour-and-butter base, one shilling and eightpence once cream and white stock are involved, and a sweet version with sherry and four egg yolks for the pudding course. The cream sauce is built on infused cream with only a teacupful of stock added at the end — a flavouring by infusion much used in English kitchens of the period for fricassees.