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Mushroom Sauce
Put a quarter of a pound of mushrooms in a saucepan with three shallots, chopped, and a small bunch of parsley. Pour in enough gravy stock to cover the mushrooms, season and let stew at the side of the fire for a couple of hours. At the end of that time, strain through a sieve. Mix some butter and flour and pour it in the sauce.
A brown mushroom-flavored sauce in the old style: the mushrooms are cooked for their flavor and then discarded with the solids. Expect a smooth, glossy sauce rather than anything chunky.
- The hinge: it is a flavoring extraction, not a garnishEverything is strained out at the end, so slice the mushrooms thin to expose surface area and do not bother trimming them prettily. If you want mushrooms in the finished sauce, cook a separate handful in butter and add them after straining.
- "At the side of the fire"On a coal range this meant the cooler edge of the stovetop, where a pan holds just below a simmer. Use the lowest burner setting, or a low oven, covered, so the liquid barely moves. Held at a real boil for two hours, most of the liquid would be gone.
- Gravy stockIn period usage this generally meant a brown stock, or the strained juices from roasting. A good unsalted beef or veal stock stands in; the sauce has no other body, so a weak stock gives a thin result.
- QuantitiesA quarter pound of mushrooms is about 4 oz, roughly 1 1/2 cups sliced. Enough stock to cover them is around 1 1/2 to 2 cups; how much reduces over the two hours depends on how tightly it is covered and how low it is held.
- Butter and flourThis is beurre mani a, no cooking beforehand: work equal weights soft butter and flour into a paste, about 1 tablespoon of each for 2 cups of sauce, and whisk it in a lump at a time over heat. Let it come to a simmer for two or three minutes to cook out the raw flour taste.
- SeasoningThe recipe seasons at the start. If the liquid reduces appreciably, it is safer to hold back the salt and correct at the end: an under-seasoned sauce is easy to fix, an over-salted reduction is not.
- YieldAbout 1 1/4 cups, enough for four to six servings alongside beef, veal, or roast chicken. It reheats well and thickens further as it cools.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the sauce repertoire of a large American hotel kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, which was essentially French practice adapted to whatever the roast cook had on hand. A sauce like this one belongs to the family of petites sauces built on brown stock and a single dominant flavoring, with the mushrooms valued for what they gave to the liquid rather than for themselves. The finish with kneaded butter and flour rather than a cooked roux may well have suited a hotel line, where a base could be pulled from the stockpot end of the range and brought to the right consistency in a minute or two as orders came in. Cultivated mushrooms were still relatively costly in this period, grown in cellars and under glass frames.