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Flemish Sauce
Put one breakfast cupful of the red part of carrot cut into very small pieces into a saucepan with one and one-half breakfast cupfuls of boiling water, and let it simmer for one hour. Put three tablespoonfuls of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour into a saucepan, and stir them over the fire until they are well mixed, then add a slice of carrot, one chopped onion, one blade of mace, and sixteen or eighteen peppercorns. Stir the whole over the fire for a minute or two, then pour in one pint of stock, and let it simmer gently for half an hour. Mix one breakfast cupful of cream with the stock, boil it up once more, then strain it through a broth napkin, or a fine hair-sieve. Strain the cooked carrot, put it into the sauce, together with two tablespoonfuls of chopped cucumber pickles, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley, one tablespoonful grated horseradish, and salt to suit the taste. Stir the sauce well, and serve it.
A velouté-style sauce enriched with cream and finished with carrot, pickle, horseradish and parsley. The method is straightforward; most of the translation work is in the measures and the finishing.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup of the period ran somewhere between 8 and 10 fluid ounces, and the book gives no standard. Treat it as 1 cup and adjust the consistency at the end rather than trying to be exact.
- Blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg; a blade is one whole piece. About 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace stands in, though it will not strain out and will slightly cloud the sauce.
- Broth napkin, hair sieveA broth napkin is a square of loose linen used as a straining cloth; a hair sieve is a fine mesh. Doubled cheesecloth in a fine strainer does both jobs.
- Do not colour the rouxButter and flour are stirred only until "well mixed" — this is a white roux. Once it takes on any colour the sauce turns beige and the point of the pale carrot-flecked finish is lost.
- Cucumber picklesThese mean sour dill or brine pickles, or cornichons. Sweet pickles or bread-and-butter slices will throw the balance of the sauce entirely.
- Finish off the heatThe horseradish, parsley and pickles go in after the straining, as the recipe directs, and the sauce is simply stirred and served. Heat dulls the pungency of grated horseradish, so there is good reason not to boil it once it is in.
- The carrot"The red part of the carrot" means the outer flesh, not the paler core. An hour's simmering will reduce the cup and a half of water considerably — check partway and add a splash if needed, since the recipe assumes there is still liquid to strain off.
- Yield and servingAround three cups once the base has simmered down. It is a sauce for boiled or poached fish, boiled beef, or plain poultry, where its sharpness does the work.
Sauces in the nineteenth-century hotel repertoire were often named for places, and Flemish sauce belongs to that habit — a loose family of preparations pointing at the Low Countries, usually through some combination of mustard, vinegar or pickle sharpness against a rich base. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel whose name fronted this 1896 collection, was assembling the working vocabulary of a large American hotel kitchen. What is notable here is how far the recipe leans on cold, sharp finishing ingredients — pickle, horseradish, parsley — stirred into a cream sauce that has already been strained perfectly smooth.