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Parsley and Butter Sauce
Put two ounces of butter into a saucepan and melt it; then stir in two tablespoonfuls of flour, mixing it well over the fire, but not letting it brown at all. Pour in gradually a pint of boiling water or white stock, and continue stirring until it thickens; then put in two ounces more butter, and two tablespoonfuls of finely chopped parsley, and season to taste with salt and pepper. When the butter has dissolved the sauce is ready for serving.
A plain white roux sauce finished with cold butter and parsley — the hinge is the finishing butter, which must melt off direct heat so the sauce stays glossy rather than splitting.
- Quantities in modern termsTwo ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons (half a stick); the pint is 2 cups. Total butter is 4 oz, one full stick, for 2 cups of liquid — rich by current habit, and easily halved on the finishing addition.
- Cook the flour, don't colour itOscar's instruction not to let it brown at all keeps this a white roux, unlike the browned roux of an espagnole; a veloute is also built on a pale roux, so colour is not what distinguishes it. Two to three minutes over moderate heat is enough to lose the raw-flour taste while the roux stays pale.
- Boiling liquid into hot rouxAdding the pint boiling, as written, is deliberate: it thickens almost at once and resists lumping. Pour in a thin stream at first and whisk rather than stir.
- White stockIn a 1890s hotel kitchen this generally meant veal or chicken bones, with aromatics, simmered without browning anything. A low-sodium chicken stock is the closest supermarket equivalent; the recipe offers water as an alternative and it works.
- The second butterThe recipe only says to add the further two ounces and wait for it to dissolve. Modern practice is to pull the pan from the heat first and whisk the butter in in pieces; held over the flame it can boil out and the sauce turn greasy.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both suit; chop it just before use and squeeze it dry in a cloth if it is wet, or it will thin the sauce and dull the colour. Add it at the end so it keeps its green.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 cups, enough for six to eight servings over boiled fish, poached chicken, carrots or new potatoes. It holds twenty minutes over warm water with a lid; whisk before serving.
Butter sauce thickened with a pale roux is the workhorse of nineteenth-century hotel cookery — the sauce blanche of French practice, which English and American books often equated with drawn butter or butter sauce. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896 while he was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf, was compiled as a working reference rather than a showpiece, and sauces like this one appear as neutral bases of the kind a kitchen of that scale relied on. The parsley version is the standard partner to poached fish in the period, and the technique of enriching a finished sauce with butter — later formalized in French kitchens as monter au beurre — is already assumed here without a name.