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Milanese Sauce
Put into a saucepan two chopped mushrooms, one or two washed and boned anchovies and two tablespoonfuls of butter and stir over the fire until browned; then sift in two tablespoonfuls of flour and stir that also for a few minutes until nicely colored; pour in one-half pint of stock and one-half wineglassful each of caper vinegar and marsala, and keep stirring them until boiling, then add a small quantity of mixed mustard, a little salt and a small pinch of cayenne pepper. Let the sauce simmer for twenty minutes, then strain and put it back into the saucepan with one tablespoonful of capers. After five minutes' boiling, the sauce will be ready for serving.
A brown sauce built on a roux, sharpened with anchovy, caper vinegar and marsala. The measures are Edwardian but all translate cleanly.
- Half a pint of stockOne US cup, 8 fl oz. Use a good brown veal or beef stock; the sauce has no other body and a weak stock will taste only of vinegar and flour.
- WineglassfulReckoned at about 2 fl oz in this period, so half a wineglass is roughly 2 tablespoons each of caper vinegar and marsala.
- Caper vinegarIn practice the pickling liquid from the caper jar, though period sources also treat vinegar steeped with capers as a preparation in its own right. If your capers are packed in salt rather than liquid, substitute a good white wine vinegar and cut the added salt.
- Mixed mustardPrepared mustard, meaning mustard powder already worked to a paste with liquid, as opposed to dry powder. A teaspoon of Dijon or an English prepared mustard covers it.
- AnchoviesThese would have been whole salt- or brine-packed fish, which is why the recipe specifies washing and boning. Modern oil-packed fillets need neither; reckon two fillets to each whole fish, so two to four in all.
- The rouxBrown the mushrooms, anchovy and butter properly before the flour goes in, then cook the flour until it takes colour. This is a brown sauce, and a pale roux leaves it tasting raw and pasty.
- StrainingThe mushrooms and anchovy are there for flavour and are strained out; the roux and stock remain as the body of the sauce. The capers stirred in afterwards are the only solids left in it.
- YieldAbout a cup once reduced and strained, enough to sauce a few portions of meat. The recipe itself names no dish to serve it with.
Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896) collects the working repertoire of a hotel kitchen that ran on the French classical system, and "Milanese" here is a menu label rather than a claim of Lombard authenticity. What the sauce actually is, structurally, is a brown roux sauce in the Carême manner given a piquant finish with capers, caper brine, mustard and cayenne, close kin to the sauces Robert and piquante that appear elsewhere in books of the era. Anchovy used this way, dissolved into the base until nothing remains but savour, was a standard seasoning device in professional kitchens long before anyone spoke of umami.