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Royal Sauce
Put four ounces of fresh butter and the yolks of three fresh eggs into a saucepan and stir them over the fire until the yolks commence to thicken, but do not allow them to cook hard. Take the sauce off the fire and stir in by degrees two tablespoonfuls of tarragon vinegar, two tablespoonfuls of Indian soy, one finely-chopped green gherkin, one small pinch of cayenne pepper and a small quantity of salt. When well incorporated keep the sauce in a cool place. When cold serve with fish.
A cold emulsified sauce in the hollandaise family, sharpened with soy and vinegar and set aside to firm up. The whole recipe turns on how gently the yolks are heated.
- Heat control is the whole dishFour ounces of butter and three yolks over direct flame will scramble easily. Work in a bowl over barely simmering water, stirring constantly, and pull it off the moment it coats the spoon. If it breaks, a teaspoon of cold water whisked in hard will sometimes bring it back.
- Indian soyThis is soy sauce, imported into Britain and America from Asia through the East India trade and sold under that name well into the 1900s. The period product was thick and dark; a Chinese dark soy or a good Japanese tamari is closer than a light supermarket soy. Salt accordingly — two tablespoons of soy carries a lot on its own.
- Tarragon vinegarWidely bottled in 1900 and still sold, or made by steeping a few bruised sprigs in white wine vinegar for a week. Plain white vinegar will read as harsh here; the tarragon is doing real work against the soy.
- Green gherkinA small vinegar-pickled cucumber, cornichon-sized, not a sweet pickle. Chop it very fine and blot it, or the loose brine will loosen the emulsion.
- Four ounces of butterOne standard US stick, 113 g. Use unsalted, given the soy.
- Add the liquids slowly"By degrees" is not decoration — four tablespoons of thin liquid into a three-yolk emulsion will split it if dumped in. Add a teaspoon at a time off the heat, whisking each in before the next.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup, enough for four to six servings. Intended cold; the recipe says only "serve with fish," so poached or cold salmon, turbot or shellfish suit it, in the manner of a mayonnaise rather than a poured sauce.
- Keeping"A cool place" meant a larder or icebox. Refrigerate, use the same day, and let it stand fifteen minutes at room temperature before serving so it is spoonable.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the Waldorf's kitchen at the turn of the century, when a fashionable American hotel cooked from a French repertoire but seasoned it with the bottled sauces of Anglo-American commerce. That is exactly what this sauce is: the classic yolk-and-butter emulsion of the French kitchen, then jolted with tarragon vinegar, chopped gherkin, cayenne and "Indian soy" — the dark, syrupy soy sauce that reached Western grocers through the East India trade and turns up all over Victorian cookery, including in period recipes for ketchups and Worcestershire-style sauces. Names like "Royal Sauce" were applied loosely in the period rather than fixed by any single authority, and the dish is better read as a house condiment for cold fish than as a codified sauce with a lineage. Its instruction to keep the sauce in a cool place is a reminder that the Waldorf's cold larder was a working department.