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Blanquette Sauce
Put two ounces of butter into a saucepan, and when melted, sift in about two tablespoonfuls of flour; stir over the fire until well-mixed, but not browned. Mix in by degrees sufficient boiling water to bring the sauce to the proper consistency, then put in a bunch of sweet herbs, some cooked button mushrooms and onions, and pepper and salt to taste. This sauce can be used for warming up cold meats as a white fricassee.
A plain white roux sauce built on water rather than stock, garnished and used to carry cold cooked meat. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes.
- Do not brown the rouxThis is the hinge. Butter and flour are cooked only until they smell faintly of biscuit and lose the raw-flour taste, two to three minutes over medium heat. The recipe is explicit: 'stir over the fire until well-mixed, but not browned' -- colour in the roux would tint the finished sauce and cost it the whiteness the name refers to.
- Quantities in modern termsTwo ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons (55 g); two tablespoons of flour is about 16 g. That ratio is fat-heavy for a roux — expect a rich, slightly loose sauce. For a firmer nappe consistency use 3 tablespoons flour.
- How much liquidThe recipe gives no figure: 'sufficient boiling water to bring the sauce to the proper consistency.' For this much flour that is likely to be nearer a cup than a pint. Add it in three or four stages, whisking smooth between each, and stop when the sauce coats a spoon.
- Use stock if you have itThe recipe calls for boiling water. Light chicken or veal stock, or the poaching liquid from the meat itself, gives the sauce something to taste like.
- Bunch of sweet herbsA period bouquet garni: parsley stems, thyme, a bay leaf, conventionally tied with string so it can be lifted out. The recipe does not say how long to leave it in; ten minutes' simmering is enough to flavour the sauce, and it is usually taken out before serving.
- Button mushrooms and onionsBoth are added already cooked. Cook the onions (pearl or small pickling onions) gently in butter and a little water without colouring them; the mushrooms want a brief turn in butter with a squeeze of lemon to keep them pale.
- Finishing, which the recipe omitsA classic blanquette sauce is enriched off the heat with an egg yolk beaten into cream, plus lemon juice. Oscar leaves it out, and the sauce works without it.
- Warming cold meatsSlice cooked chicken, veal or lamb, add it to the finished sauce off the boil, and hold it below a simmer until heated through. Hard boiling can break up the meat and, if you have added yolk, curdle the sauce. The recipe gives no yield or serving count.
Blanquette comes from the French blanc, white, and names both the sauce and the stew it belongs to — veal, lamb or chicken poached rather than browned, then bound with a white roux and usually finished with egg yolk and cream. Oscar Tschirky's version is the sauce stripped to its working parts and handed to the household cook for a specific job: using up yesterday's roast. Oscar, who ran the dining rooms at the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria from its opening in 1893, put out The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896; much of it is professional French repertoire set down in instructions a domestic kitchen could follow. In this recipe the stock has become boiling water and the liaison of yolks is absent altogether.