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Russian Sauce
2 tablespoons flour 1 cup White Stock III 1/4 teaspoon salt Few grains pepper ½ teaspoon finely chopped chives 1/2 teaspoon made mustard 1 teaspoon grated horseradish 1/4 cup cream 1 teaspoon lemon juice Melt butter, add flour, and pour on gradually White Stock; then add salt, pepper, mustard, chives, and horseradish. Cook two minutes, strain, add cream and lemon juice. Reheat before serving. Serve with Beef Tenderloins or Hamburg Steaks. 3 tablespoons butter ½ teaspoon mustard
This is a velouté — a white roux thinned with stock — finished with cream, mustard and horseradish. The printed ingredient list has been scrambled and is incomplete, so a few quantities have to be reasoned out rather than read off.
- Missing quantitiesThe list gives 3 tablespoons butter but no amount of flour or White Stock, and it prints mustard twice at two different amounts (½ teaspoon and 1½ teaspoons). Farmer's white sauces are built on equal measures of butter and flour to a cup of liquid, the quantity rising with the thickness wanted, so 3 tablespoons flour and 1 cup stock is a reasonable reading here; treat the mustard as ½ to 1½ teaspoons to taste.
- White StockA separate recipe in the book: veal, or veal and fowl, simmered with vegetables and kept pale. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in. Avoid a dark brown stock, which will muddy both the colour and the horseradish.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard means prepared wet mustard from a jar, not dry powder. Use a smooth Dijon or an English prepared mustard; if you only have powder, mix it with a little cold water and let it sit ten minutes before adding.
- Grated horseradishFresh root, grated, was assumed. Bottled prepared horseradish is packed in vinegar, so if you use it, drain it and hold back some of the lemon juice or the sauce will taste sharp rather than warm.
- The hinge: cream goes in off the boilThe cream and lemon juice are added after straining, and the sauce is only reheated. Boiling it after the lemon goes in will curdle the cream and blow off the volatile heat of the mustard and horseradish, which is the whole point of the sauce.
- Strain, then decideStraining pulls out the chives and horseradish shreds and leaves a smooth, faintly pungent sauce. If you would rather see the chives, strain before adding them and stir them in with the cream.
- YieldOn the assumed cup of stock, something over a cup of finished sauce, enough for several servings alongside beef. It thickens as it cools; loosen with a spoonful of stock when reheating.
- Hamburg SteaksThe book's Hamburg Steak is a seasoned chopped-beef patty, pan-broiled — not a sandwich. The sauce suits any plainly cooked beef, and roast or boiled beef as well.
Nineteenth-century Continental cookery attached national labels to sauces fairly loosely, and "Russian" generally signalled horseradish, mustard or sour cream — the flavours European cooks associated with Russian and Baltic tables, where grated horseradish (khren) was and remains a standard accompaniment to beef and boiled meats. Farmer's version is really a French velouté wearing that label: butter and flour cooked together, moistened with white stock, strained, and enriched at the end.