Chives Sauce

A bread-thickened sauce of the old school: no roux, no flour, just crumbs browned in butter and loosened with stock. It comes together in under ten minutes, and the only real skill is controlling how thick it ends up.

• MeasuresHalf a pint is one cup (8 fl oz). Two ounces of butter is half a stick, 4 tablespoons.
• The crumbs decide everythingA cup of dry, fine crumbs will drink the whole cup of broth and give you a paste; fresh soft crumbs give a looser sauce. Start with dried fine crumbs and hold back some broth, or plan on thinning with more stock at the end.
• "Finely-mixed chives"Possibly a misprint for finely-minced, though the phrase may be as written. Two tablespoons of minced fresh chives is right; add them with the broth as written, but a further pinch stirred in off the heat keeps the color and the onion note bright.
• Pale golden, not brownButtered crumbs go from blond to burnt fast, and scorched crumbs cannot be rescued. Keep the heat at medium and stir constantly; pull the pan the moment the smell turns nutty.
• Keeping it smoothAdd the broth in two or three additions, stirring each in fully before the next, the way you would a risotto. Dumping it in cold and all at once is what produces lumps.
• BrothUse whatever matches the dish it will dress " period recipes assumed a pot of stock at hand. Bear in mind that modern commercial stock is already salted, so season only after the sauce has boiled and reduced slightly.
• Yield and servingRoughly a cup and a half of sauce; the recipe gives no yield or number of servings. It suits boiled or roast poultry, veal, and poached fish; it thickens further as it stands, so hold it over hot water and loosen with stock before it goes to the table.