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Olive and Almond Sauce
3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons flour 1 cup White Stock ½ cup cream 1/4 cup shredded almonds 1 teaspoon beef extract 8 olives (stoned and cut in quarters) ½ tablespoon lemon juice ¼ teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne Melt butter, add flour, and pour on gradually White Stock. Just before serving add remaining ingredients. Serve with boiled or steamed fish.
A velouté-style sauce thickened with butter and flour, enriched at the last moment with cream, almonds and olives. The whole point is that the finishing ingredients go in off the heat.
- The hinge: add the garnish lateAlmonds, olives, lemon juice and cream go in just before serving, as written. Lemon juice held over heat with cream risks curdling, and almonds shredded fine turn soft and pasty if they sit in the hot sauce.
- White StockIn this book it is a mild veal or veal-and-chicken stock, only lightly seasoned. A light chicken stock is the closest supermarket equivalent; avoid anything dark or heavily salted, as the beef extract and olives already bring salt and savour.
- Beef extractA concentrated meat paste of the Liebig/Bovril type. Use a scant teaspoon of a modern beef concentrate or bouillon paste, and taste before adding any further salt.
- Cream quantityAs printed the sauce takes 1½ cups cream to 1 cup stock, which is thin for 3 tablespoons each of butter and flour. If you want a sauce that coats fish more firmly, add the cream gradually and stop when the consistency suits you.
- OlivesStoned means pitted. Plain brine-cured green olives are the likeliest reading, rather than oil-cured black or pimiento-stuffed; rinse them if they are very salty.
- AlmondsShredded almonds here are blanched almonds cut lengthwise into slivers. Toasting them briefly in a dry pan is not in the original but keeps them from going limp.
- Method and heatCook the butter and flour together a minute or two without colouring, then add the stock gradually off the boil and whisk smooth. Keep the finished sauce below a simmer once the cream is in.
- YieldAbout a pint and a half of sauce, enough for six to eight servings of boiled or steamed fish. It does not reheat well once the almonds are in.
Fannie Farmer's sauce chapter is essentially a drill in one technique: melt butter, stir in flour, add liquid, then vary the finish. This is the same white sauce that underpins dozens of entries in the book, pushed toward the table with a meat extract for depth and olives for a sharp, briny note that is often said to have been fashionable in American cooking around 1900. Almonds and olives together with boiled fish suggest what may have been a Boston Cooking School tendency to dress up plainly cooked protein with a garnished sauce rather than seasoning the fish itself; boiled and steamed fish was considered wholesome and invalid-friendly, and the sauce did the work of making it interesting.