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Garlic Sauce
Remove the peel from some garlic, separate them into cloves, put them in a saucepan of water and boil for five minutes; change the water three times, boiling for five minutes in each. Strain off the water, add white sauce to the cloves, boil up and serve. The strength of the flavor is determined by the length of boiling, as the longer it boils the weaker it will be. The garlic if properly cooked will have an almond taste.
A blanched-garlic sauce of the sort a hotel kitchen kept on hand for mutton, lamb and grilled fish. The method is sound, but the original assumes you know how much garlic to use and what "white sauce" means.
- Quantities are missingOscar gives no amounts at all. For about two cups of finished sauce, three or four heads of garlic broken into cloves is a reasonable working figure, though the recipe gives no guidance either way on how garlicky the result should be.
- What "white sauce" means hereMost likely a basic white sauce of the béchamel type: roughly equal weights butter and flour cooked to a blond roux, then milk whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. Some period white sauces were made with stock rather than milk. Either way the book treats it as a known preparation rather than spelling it out.
- Peel after separatingThe instruction to peel and then separate into cloves is backwards for a whole head. Break the head apart first, then skin each clove; the blanching itself loosens any skin that resists.
- The three changes of water are the pointEach fresh change of boiling water carries off more of the sulphur compounds that make raw garlic sharp. Repeated blanching, not long boiling, is what mellows it, and the recipe's own explanation of why is a bit muddled.
- Read the flavor rule with careBoiling does soften garlic's pungency, but changing the water carries more of it off than simply boiling longer in the same water. For a stronger sauce, blanch twice rather than three times.
- "Boil up and serve"Bring the combined sauce just to a simmer, a minute or two, long enough to marry. Extended boiling of a flour-thickened milk sauce scorches on the bottom and thins the texture.
- Texture choiceLeft whole, the cloves stay soft and buttery in the sauce. For a smooth version, crush them into the béchamel with a fork or pass the whole thing through a sieve.
- The almond testProperly blanched cloves are sweet, faintly nutty and yield instantly to a fork. If they still bite, give them another change of water; undercooked garlic will dominate everything it is served with.
- Yield and servingThree or four heads with two cups of white sauce serves six to eight as an accompaniment. The recipe names no dish to serve it with; it suits roast or boiled mutton and lamb, and works equally with poached chicken or firm white fish.
Boiling garlic in several changes of water is an old European kitchen trick that predates any particular recipe, and it survives in French cooking in the garlic purées used to enrich sauces. The technique matters because it strips the pungency without stripping the body of the clove, leaving something sweet enough that Oscar could compare it to almond. That comparison is telling: at the turn of the twentieth century, garlic was still faintly suspect in American dining rooms, associated with immigrant and southern European cooking rather than with hotel service. Oscar Tschirky's book is full of quiet accommodations between Continental technique and New York expectations.