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Sauces.
The earliest form of sauce or gravy that was used with meat was a dressing of honey and spices, later the juice which had been drawn from the meat in cooking, was seasoned and poured over it when it was served. Still later a sauce was made by thickening the meat juice and probably some form of fat was added to make it richer.
The modern cook uses an endless number of sauces as dressings for eggs and vegetables as well as for meats. The cream sauce, white sauce or milk gravy, as it is variously known in different localities, is the commonest and simplest of these. The others are merely variations of this one form. Orion, a Greek, one of the original seven sages of the kitchen is said to have invented the white sauce.
Value of Sauces in the Daily Diet.
I. Sauces add variety to the diet by enabling us to serve the same food in several different ways. Take for example boiled cabbage. The ordinary way is to boil the cabbage with a piece of meat and serve it with vinegar. This may be varied 1. By re-heating plain boiled cabbage in white sauce. 2. By arranging boiled cabbage in a buttered baking dish with alternate layers of white sauce, covering with buttered crumbs and baking. 3. By serving on slices of toast with Hollandaise sauce (white sauce to which lemon juice and the yolks of eggs have been added) poured over it.
II. A small amount of food may be made to serve more persons by the addition of a sauce, thus using left-overs that might otherwise be thrown away.
III. The flavor of the strong juiced vegetables is somewhat disguised by the use of a sauce and made more palatable to some.
IV. Considerable food value is added to the dish by the use of a sauce.
Persons of weak digestion should not use thickened sauces too extensively unless they are made in the double boiler according to Method No. II. In the other methods the flour is too thoroughly coated with fat to be easily digested, and milk that has been boiled is less digestible than milk that has been heated in the double boiler and kept below boiling temperature.