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Asparagus Sauce
Season with nutmeg, pepper and salt about half a teacupful of boiling water, add the yolks of two eggs, and whisk it by the side of a fire, but do not let it boil. Add gradually a quarter of a pound of butter, broken into small pieces, and continue stirring until it has the appearance of smooth cream. Add a small quantity of lemon-juice, and serve in a sauceboat. This is a very good sauce to be served with cold slaw.
This is a hollandaise in all but name — the title means a sauce for asparagus, not a sauce made from it. The whole thing hinges on heat control.
- Never let it boil"By the side of a fire" means indirect, gentle heat: a bowl over barely simmering water, or a heavy pan moved on and off a low burner. Above roughly 180F the yolks scramble and the emulsion breaks.
- Half a teacupfulA Victorian teacup runs 4 to 6 fluid ounces, so half is roughly 2 to 3 fluid ounces, about 1/4 to 1/3 cup. That is generous liquid for two yolks and will give a loose, pourable sauce; 2 to 3 tablespoons produces something closer to a modern hollandaise.
- A quarter of a pound of butterOne stick, 4 oz, 113 g. Add it a few pieces at a time and let each addition melt and emulsify before the next, or the sauce will separate.
- Egg temperatureA properly made warm emulsion carries the yolks to roughly 150-160F, which is where they begin to thicken. If you plan to hold it lukewarm for any length of time, use pasteurized eggs and keep the sauce covered and warm rather than tepid.
- NutmegFreshly grated, and a very small amount — pre-ground nutmeg from a jar is flatter and it is easy to overwhelm two yolks.
- Cold slawAn English respelling of Dutch koolsla, arrived at by folk etymology rather than a direct older form of "coleslaw." Presumably the plain cabbage salad of the period; serve the sauce barely warm in that case, not hot.
- YieldAbout 3/4 cup, enough for four servings of asparagus or a medium bowl of slaw. It does not reheat; make it as close to service as possible.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel who fronted the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893, published his cook book in 1896 as a compendium of the hotel's kitchen practice, and this entry shows the French sauce vocabulary of that kitchen being quietly domesticated. What is described is the butter-and-yolk emulsion the French called hollandaise, here surfacing under the name of the vegetable it was meant to accompany. The suggestion to pour it over cold slaw is the more surprising note: coleslaw, from the Dutch koolsla and long established in New York through the city's Dutch inheritance, was in this era dressed with cooked or boiled dressings as well as with mayonnaise, and an enriched egg-and-butter sauce sits squarely in that tradition.