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Nonpareil Sauce
Chop a slice of boiled ham, an equal quantity of breast of cooked chicken, a pickled cucumber, the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, one anchovy freed from skin and bone, the head of a shallot and a little parsley. Put them into a saucepan with some catsup and boil all together for a few minutes. Serve with either meat or fish.
A chopped, boiled relish-sauce of the sort a hotel kitchen made from cold roast leftovers. The original gives no quantities at all, so treat the ham and chicken as the base and everything else as seasoning.
- Catsup meant more than tomatoIn 1896 catsup could still mean mushroom or walnut catsup — thin, dark, salty, closer to a spiced soy than to a sweet tomato sauce — though bottled tomato catsup was by then common. Modern tomato ketchup will make this noticeably sweeter and thicker; mushroom ketchup or a mix of ketchup thinned with stock and a little vinegar is nearer the intent.
- Working quantitiesA useful reading is about 2 oz each of ham and chicken breast, one medium gherkin, one hard-boiled yolk, one anchovy fillet, one shallot and a tablespoon of parsley, bound with roughly 3/4 cup of catsup. That gives something over a cup of sauce, enough for four.
- Chop, do not blitzThe point of the sauce is distinguishable specks of ham, chicken and pickle suspended in the catsup. A food processor turns it into a paste and loses the whole character; use a knife and aim for a fine, even dice.
- "The head of a shallot"This means one whole bulb, not a clove of it — modern shallots often split into two lobes, so use one small bulb. Minced raw it stays sharp through the brief boiling.
- The anchovyPeriod anchovies came whole in salt, hence "freed from skin and bone." One oil-packed fillet, blotted, does the job; it is there for depth rather than fish flavour.
- SaltHam, anchovy, pickle and catsup are all salty. Season only after the sauce has boiled and reduced, and expect to add none at all.
- "Boil a few minutes"Three to five minutes over moderate heat is enough to marry the flavours and take the raw edge off the shallot. Longer and the chicken goes stringy and the catsup catches on the pan.
- KeepingBecause it contains cooked meat it is not a preserve. Refrigerate and use within two days; it is good warm over boiled beef, cold cuts or poached white fish.
Nonpareil — French for "without equal" — was also plain kitchen vocabulary: nonpareil capers are the smallest grade. It belongs to a family of chopped, pungent sauces of the late nineteenth century, close cousins to sauce ravigote and to the various "hachée" sauces that turned scraps of cooked ham, tongue and poultry into something to pour over the next day's fish or boiled meat. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms and put his name to The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896, was collecting exactly this sort of practical hotel formula: no weights, no timings to speak of, written for a cook who already had a larder of cold roast birds and a jug of catsup on the shelf. The reliance on bottled catsup as a base is itself a period marker — commercial mushroom, walnut and tomato catsups were pantry staples in American kitchens well before ketchup narrowed to mean one sweet red thing.