Sharp Sauce
INGREDIENTS for good-sized dish of cutlets.-2 oz. of butter, 6 shalots, a small carrot, a small bunch of savoury herbs including parsley, a small bay-leaf, 2 slices of lean ham, 6 peppercorns, 1 blade of mace, 4 tablespoonfuls of vinegar, 1/2 pint of stock, 3 allspice, a small lump of sugar, salt and cayenne to taste. AVERAGE CosT, 10d.
Slice the carrots and shalots, and put them in a stewpan, with the butter. Add the ham, finely-minced, the spices and the herbs, and let all simmer over a slow fire till the bottom of the stewpan is covered with a brown glaze. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon, and add the remaining ingredients; then simmer very gently for 15 minutes; skim off every atom of fat, strain the sauce, and serve very hot.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A classic brown sauce piquante, built on a shallot-and-ham base reduced to a glaze. The whole character of it comes from that first stage, so read the browning note before you start.
- The hinge: the brown glazeEverything depends on cooking the carrot, shallot and minced ham slowly until the pan bottom carries a dark sticky film, then deglazing it with the vinegar and stock. If the film scorches the sauce turns bitter and cannot be rescued; keep the heat low and the wooden spoon moving.
- Half a pintBeeton's pint is imperial, so 1/2 pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. Use a well-flavoured brown stock, not water with a cube.
- ShalotsShallots. The recipe gives no size; six small shallots come to something like 3-4 oz peeled, which is roughly two or three of the large banana shallots sold now.
- Mace and allspiceA blade of mace is one piece of the dried aril of nutmeg, sold whole in spice shops; a pinch of ground mace substitutes at a pinch. The three allspice are whole berries, not ground.
- VinegarMalt or white wine vinegar is right for the period. Four tablespoons in 10 fl oz of stock is assertive, which is the point of a sharp sauce, but reduce to three if you are serving it with delicate cutlets.
- SkimmingTwo ounces of butter plus ham fat will pool on the surface. Skim it off properly, as directed, or the sauce will taste greasy rather than sharp; letting it settle off the heat for a minute makes this easier.
- The garbled timeThe "TIME" line is incomplete; a fraction appears to have dropped out in printing. The recipe itself times only the final stage, 15 minutes of gentle simmering, with the glazing stage before that.
- YieldSomething under a cup of finished strained sauce, once the solids are strained out and the fat skimmed; the recipe says only that it is for a 'good-sized dish of cutlets.' Spoon it under or around the meat rather than over, so the crust stays crisp.
This is one of the great family of nineteenth-century brown sauces derived from French practice, close kin to what French kitchens called sauce piquante: a mirepoix of root vegetables and aromatics sweated in butter with ham or bacon, browned to a fond, then let down with vinegar and stock and strained clear. Sharpness had a job to do. Mid-Victorian tables leaned heavily on mutton and veal cutlets, and an acid, spiced sauce cut the fat of meat that was often older and stronger-tasting than what a modern butcher sells. The "average cost" line of 10d. is a standard feature of Beeton's recipes and part of the book's emphasis on household accounting; the small lump of sugar balances the vinegar.