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Mushroom Sauce
6 mushrooms 1/2 tablespoon butter Salt and red pepper 1 teaspoon flour Juice of 1/2 lemon 1 tablespoon mushroom catsup 1/4 cup stock Clean the mushrooms; cut them into small pieces; put them in a saucepan with the butter, salt and pepper, lemon juice and catsup; stew until tender; add the stock and the flour mixed with a little cold water; bring all to a boil and serve with beefsteak or game. 25 oysters
A small, sharp pan sauce built on mushroom liquor rather than cream, meant to be spooned over steak or game. It comes together in about fifteen minutes and makes a scant half cup.
- "Red pepper" means cayenneIn American books of this era red pepper is ground cayenne, not paprika and not chilli flakes. A pinch is enough against a quarter cup of stock.
- Mushroom catsupA thin, dark, salty extract of salted mushrooms, closer to Worcestershire or soy than to tomato ketchup. It is still sold by British specialty grocers; a teaspoon of soy sauce plus a few drops of Worcestershire is a common stand-in. It is salty in its own right, so go carefully with the added salt.
- Six mushrooms is a weight, not a countSix mushrooms is an imprecise measure -- The recipe assumes the small cultivated or field mushrooms of the period, so the total is modest. Weigh rather than count if you are using anything larger.
- Stew until tender, and let the liquid goStew until tender -- The mushrooms will give up their water as they stew; let it cook down before the stock goes in, or the finished sauce will be thin.
- The flour slurryMix the teaspoon of flour smooth with a little cold water before it goes in, and let the sauce come properly to the boil as directed so the starch loses its raw taste. This is a light coating sauce, not a gravy.
- StockBeef or veal stock for steak, game stock for game. A quarter cup is 2 fl oz; if your stock is a reduced modern one, thin it, since the catsup is already salty.
- YieldEnough for two, perhaps three, portions of steak. Double it cleanly if you need more.
- The stray lineThe "25 oysters" at the end appears to be the opening ingredient of the following recipe and has nothing to do with this sauce.
Mushroom catsup is the older meaning of the word: before tomatoes took the name in the nineteenth century, a catsup (or ketchup) was any thin, keeping sauce made by salting a strong-flavoured ingredient, drawing off the liquor and spicing it. Mushrooms, walnuts and anchovies were the standard bases in English kitchens, and the bottled mushroom version crossed to America as a pantry staple for exactly this purpose " a pan sauce with more savour than a plain stock could give. The bottle survived in the American larder long after tomato ketchup had claimed the name in ordinary speech.