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Sicilian Sauce
Place in a mortar half a tablespoonful of coriander seeds and four cloves; bruise them well, then put in a saucepan one and a half breakfast cupfuls of gravy, and one cupful of essence of ham, together with the thinly shredded peel of half a lemon, and the bruised seeds of the cloves; when it is boiling, add two bay leaves, two garlic cloves, and a head of celery sliced. Boil until reduced to half its quantity, and then add a wineglassful of white wine; strain through a fine hair-sieve, and work in well a tablespoonful of butter and a similar quantity of flour, and put all back in the saucepan, stirring the sauce over the fire until thick. It should be served while hot with roast fowl or meat.
A reduction sauce from the old brigade repertoire, written for a kitchen that always had stockpots going. The two ingredients that stop most cooks are "gravy" and "essence of ham" — neither means what a modern reader assumes.
- "Gravy" here is stockIn this period "gravy" means a strong brown veal or beef stock, not thickened pan drippings. Use a good dark stock; a thickened gravy will not reduce cleanly and will turn pasty.
- Essence of hamA concentrated ham broth, made by simmering ham trimmings and bones down to an intense liquid. A cup of well-reduced ham or smoked-pork stock does the job; at a pinch, stock simmered with 4 oz of chopped ham for 20 minutes and strained.
- Breakfast cupful and wineglassfulA breakfast cup is roughly 8-10 fl oz, so call it 12 oz of stock plus 8 oz ham essence. A wineglass in these books is about 2 fl oz.
- Cloves and corianderWhole cloves, bruised, not ground — four is plenty for this volume and more will dominate. The text later garbles them as "the bruised seeds of the cloves"; it means the pounded coriander and cloves together.
- A head of celeryThat means a whole bunch in modern terms, not a single rib. Two or three ribs with leaves is closer to what the sauce needs at this scale, unless you want it markedly vegetal.
- The butter and flour go in as beurre maniéButter and flour kneaded raw to a paste, whisked into the strained hot liquid. Add it in small pieces off the boil, then bring back to a simmer for two or three minutes to cook out the flour taste.
- Strain before thickeningThe order matters: reduce, strain out the aromatics, then thicken. Thickening first makes it nearly impossible to pass through a sieve.
- YieldRoughly a cup and a half of finished sauce after reduction and the addition of the wine — four to six servings alongside roast chicken, veal or pork.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book collects the sauce repertoire of a large hotel kitchen, where a stockpot, a ham essence and a glaze were standing preparations rather than things made to order — which is why a recipe like this can open by calling for two different concentrated stocks with no explanation. The name appears to follow the nineteenth-century convention of attaching a place to a sauce by way of a signature flavor rather than any documented regional origin; here the lemon peel, garlic, bay and coriander are meant to read as southern Italian. Sauces of this type, a reduced brown base finished with wine and bound with butter and flour, sit in the Carême-to-Escoffier tradition that American grand hotels imported wholesale.