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Olive Sauce
Place some olives in a basin of water, and let them remain for thirty minutes. Have a small slice of onion in a saucepan with a few tablespoonfuls of salad oil, and as soon as the onion commences to color add two tablespoonfuls of flour, and stir until it is smooth. Pour in a pint of rich stock, and remove the pan to the side of the fire where the stock can simmer gently. Remove the stones from the olives, add them to the sauce, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for twenty minutes longer. Skim it well, and when ready to serve, squeeze in the juice of a lemon. If a thin sauce is desired, the flour may be reduced.
A brown-ish olive sauce built on an oil roux rather than butter, meant for roast duck, tongue, or braised beef. It is straightforward; the only real variables are the olives and the stock.
- Soak the olives, and mean itThe thirty-minute soak is the hinge. Barrel-cured olives of the period were far saltier than most jarred olives today, and skipping the soak with a briny modern olive will give an aggressively salty sauce once it reduces. Taste an olive first: if it makes you wince, soak it; if it is mild, a quick rinse is enough.
- Which olivesThe recipe says only "olives"; plain unstuffed olives in brine are the likely intent. Picholine or Manzanilla work; skip anything stuffed with pimiento or marinated in herbs and garlic.
- "Side of the fire"On a coal range this meant the cooler edge of the stovetop. On gas or induction, the lowest setting that keeps a lazy bubble going, or a heat diffuser.
- Salad oilAt this date "salad oil" could mean olive oil or cottonseed oil, both of which were sold for the purpose. Use a mild olive oil. Two tablespoons of flour to a pint of stock gives a light coating sauce; drop to one tablespoon for something closer to a thin gravy, as the last line suggests.
- Rich stockA good unsalted brown stock, or demi-glace thinned with water, is the closest equivalent to the "rich stock" called for. Avoid salted commercial broth here, since the olives contribute their own salt and the sauce reduces for twenty minutes.
- Season at the endThe recipe seasons when the olives go in; season lightly there and adjust after the twenty-minute simmer and again after the lemon juice, since the olives and the reduction both add salt. A whole lemon may be more acid than you want; add half, taste, then decide.
- YieldA pint of stock reduces to roughly 1 1/2 cups of finished sauce, enough for four to six servings.
Olive sauce belongs to the classic French repertoire that Oscar Tschirky brought to American readers in 1896: it is essentially a sauce aux olives, a brown sauce finished with pitted olives and acid, of the kind traditionally served with duckling, braised tongue, or salt-cured meats. It is made with an oil-and-flour roux rather than a butter one. Oscar was not a cook by trade but the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel, and his Cook Book assumes you already have a pint of rich stock on hand and know where the cool side of the range is. The soaking step is a reminder of how olives reached American kitchens then, out of a brine barrel at the grocer rather than a sealed jar.