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Meat (INGREDIENTS onions blade)
INGREDIENTS.-2 onions, 1 blade of mace, mushroom trimmings, a small bunch of parsley, 1 oz. of butter, flour, 1/2 pint of water, 1 pint of milk, salt, the juice of lemon, 2 eggs. - AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Put in a stewpan the milk and ½ pint of water, with the onions, mace, mushrooms, parsley and salt. Let these simmer gently for 20 minutes. In the meantime, rub on a plate 1 oz. of flour and butter; put it to the liquor and stir it well till it boils up; then place it by the side of the fire, and continue stirring until it is perfectly smooth.
Now strain it through a sieve into a basin, after which put it back in the stewpan, and add the lemon-juice. Beat up the yolks of the eggs with about 4 dessertspoonfuls of milk; strain this to the sauce, keep stirring it over the fire, but do not let it boil, or it will curdle.
TIME.-Altogether, hour.
Béchamel, or French White
This is a rich white sauce finished with egg yolks — essentially a béchamel infused with aromatics and enriched at the last moment. The whole thing hinges on the finish: once the yolks go in, the sauce must never boil.
- The egg liaisonAfter the yolks are strained in, hold the sauce below a simmer — around 180F/82C is the upper limit. A boil will scramble the yolks into visible threads and the sauce will not come back.
- QuantitiesHalf a pint here is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz or about 285 ml; the pint of milk is 20 fl oz, roughly 570 ml. The ingredient list gives no weight for the flour, and 'rub on a plate 1 oz. of flour and butter' most likely means 1 oz of each — a thickening that would give a fairly loose sauce for this quantity of liquid.
- Rubbing butter and flour on a plateThis is a beurre manié, not a cooked roux: work equal weights of soft butter and flour to a paste with a knife or your fingers, then whisk it into the hot liquid in small pieces so it disperses without lumping.
- Blade of maceA blade is one dried strip of the aril that surrounds a nutmeg, sold whole in some spice shops. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes, though it will cloud the sauce slightly and cannot be strained out.
- Mushroom trimmingsStalks and peelings, the sort of offcuts kept back from other preparations. A handful of chopped mushroom stalks does the same job, though darker-skinned varieties may tint the sauce slightly; the trimmings are strained out in any case.
- "By the side of the fire"A range top had a cooler zone away from the firebox. Move the pan to the lowest gas setting or a diffuser — the point is gentle heat while the sauce smooths out.
- Timing and yieldThe recipe's own TIME line gives the total as an hour (the fraction is missing from the text), of which 20 minutes is the infusion. Starting from a pint of milk and half a pint of water it makes something under a pint and a half after simmering — enough for several servings with poached chicken, fish or vegetables.
- Lemon juiceAdd it before the yolks, as directed, and taste as you go: too much acid in a milk-based sauce will make it grainy at the same time the yolks are trying to set.
Béchamel is generally traced to the household of Louis XIV, where it is traditionally credited to Louis de Béchameil, a financier and steward of the royal table, though cooks had been thickening milk with flour and butter long before his name attached to it. By Mrs Beeton's day the sauce had been thoroughly domesticated in England, and Victorian versions like this one habitually infused the milk with onion, mace and parsley before thickening — a step that separates a proper sauce from plain thickened milk. The egg-yolk finish pushes it further, toward what French kitchens would call a sauce allemande or parisienne: richer, glossier, and reserved for boiled fowl, brains, sweetbreads and delicate fish. The average cost of 9d. is characteristic of the book, which priced every dish so a mistress could check her cook's housekeeping.