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And Roast Goose
If apple sauce is desired, cook the apples until very soft and stir them perfectly smooth. Add sugar and a little gelatine dissolved in water, using one tablespoon to a pint of sauce. Pour into molds or bowls and when cold turn out on a plate the same as jelly. This is often preferred to plain sauce.. If baked apples are preferred, select good, firm greenings, pare, halve and core them. Place on a shallow pan not touching each other, and cover them with boiling water in which has been stirred. one cup of sugar to every six apples. Stew till tender and remove without breaking. Boil the syrup one-half hour longer, pour over the apples and serve cold. Lemon may be used as a flavoring, if desired.
SPANISH SAUCE, No. 1-This sauce is used with many French dishes and is made of two ounces of butter; one and one-half ounce of lean raw ham; two ounces of flour; one carrot, one pint of stock or water; one onion; two cloves; one stalk of celery; salt and pepper. Heat the butter, add the flour and stir until of a rich brown; then add the stock, ham and other seasoning, cutting the vegetables into small pieces. Stir until it begins to boil, then remove the pan to the back of the range and let it simmer gently for one hour. Skim off the oil, strain and it is ready to use.
SPANISH SAUCE, No. 2-To make this finest of brown sauces, take one and one-quarter cups of consommé; four tablespoons of flour; four tablespoons of butter; two tablespoons of chopped onion; one tablespoon of chopped celery; one ounce of lean ham; one bay leaf; one sprig of parsley; two cloves; salt and pepper to taste. Cook the butter and the vegetables together for ten minutes, being careful not to let them burn; then add the flour and cook until brown, stirring all the while. Draw the saucepan back, and gradually add the consommé; boil for three minutes, stirring all the time; then add the herbs and spice, and put the mixture back where it will simmer. Skim off the fat, and strain. It is now ready to be served as a simple Spanish sauce or as the foundation for various fish and meat sauces.
TOMATO SAUCE, No. I-One quart of canned tomatoes; two tablespoons of butter; two tablespoons of flour; eight cloves; one slice of onion; salt and pepper. Set the tomatoes, onion and cloves on the fire and cook for thirty minutes. Place the butter in a frying-pan, and when it is hot, add the flour, and cook until smooth and brown, stirring constantly. Add the tomatoes, cook for three minutes, season with salt and pepper, and pass through a strainer fine enough to hold the seeds.
Four separate preparations run together here: a molded apple sauce and baked apples for the goose, two versions of espagnole ("Spanish") sauce, and a tomato sauce. Weights and volumes are mixed freely between them, so read each one through before starting.
- The hinge: brown the roux, don't burn itBoth Spanish sauces depend on cooking flour and butter to a genuine deep brown before liquid goes in. Work over moderate heat and stir constantly; the moment it smells acrid rather than nutty it is finished, and the sauce will be bitter with no way back.
- "Back of the range"A coal range had a cooler zone away from the firebox. On a modern hob this means the lowest possible simmer, barely a tremble, for the full hour.
- Ounces versus tablespoonsSpanish Sauce No. 1 measures by weight: two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons, two ounces of flour is a scant half cup. That is a great deal of flour for one pint of stock and will give a very thick, gravy-like sauce; No. 2, with 4 tablespoons of each to 1 1/4 cups consomme, works out to a similar proportion. Thin either with additional stock to the consistency you want after straining.
- Gelatine proportionsOne tablespoon of granulated gelatin per pint is somewhat more than a modern envelope's usual job for the same volume, and gives a firmer, sliceable mold rather than a soft set. If you want something that turns out cleanly but still eats like sauce, one envelope (2 1/4 teaspoons) per pint is closer to modern taste. Soften it in cold water first, then stir into the hot apple.
- GreeningsRhode Island Greening, a firm tart cooking apple still grown in the northeast but rarely sold in supermarkets. Granny Smith or Northern Spy behave the same way: they hold their halves through stewing instead of collapsing.
- Baked apples that are not bakedDespite the heading, these are poached in sugar syrup on the stovetop, 15 to 25 minutes depending on the apple. Lift them out with a slotted spoon while they still have some resistance; the syrup reduction takes another half hour and will glaze them as it cools.
- ConsomméA clarified, well-reduced brown stock. Good unsalted beef or veal stock is the substitute; season only at the end, since the sauce reduces and the ham adds salt of its own.
- Canned tomatoesA quart is two standard 14.5 oz cans plus a little, or one 28 oz can with its juice. Eight whole cloves in a quart is assertive by current taste; four is plenty, and they must be fished out or strained away.
- YieldEach brown sauce makes about a cup after straining and reduction, enough for four to six servings as an accompaniment. The tomato sauce yields roughly a pint and a half.
"Spanish sauce" is the English rendering of sauce espagnole, one of the mother sauces codified in nineteenth-century French kitchens and generally traced in its classic form to Carême: brown roux, brown stock, a mirepoix of carrot, onion and celery, and a scrap of raw ham for depth, simmered and skimmed until clear. Why it is called Spanish has never been settled; the usual story, offered without much evidence, is that a Spanish cook in a French royal household added tomato or ham to the standard brown sauce. Its presence in a household manual alongside molded apple sauce shows how thoroughly professional French technique had filtered into American middle-class cooking — the same page expects a cook to hold a sauce at the back of a coal range for an hour and to turn out a gelatin mold. Apple sauce with roast goose is far older and far plainer: the sharpness of a tart cooking apple cuts the fat of a bird that renders a great deal of it, which is why the pairing has survived every change in fashion since.