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Wine Sauce for Fish
Put one teacupful each of stock and wine into a saucepan, and if the fish has been cooked in wine, mix in also the cooking liquor. Put a lump of butter and a tablespoonful of flour in a fryingpan, and stir it over the fire till browned, then mix it in with the sauce. Stir the sauce over the fire till boiling; then strain it through a fine hair-sieve into another saucepan; skim off all the fat as it rises, and let it simmer by the side of the fire for a few minutes. Squeeze in the juice of a lemon, mix a pinch of cayenne in the sauce, and serve
A brown-roux fish sauce of the classic hotel kitchen, thin by modern standards and meant to be spooned around a poached or braised fish rather than blanketing it. Two details carry it: the roux must actually brown, and the sauce must be skimmed properly.
- TeacupfulA teacup in cookbooks of this period is usually smaller than the 8-ounce measuring cup, commonly reckoned at about 6 fluid ounces, though usage varied. About 3/4 cup each of stock and wine is a reasonable reading, and expect the finished sauce to reduce a little further.
- Which stock, which wineThe recipe does not specify; fish stock (fumet) suits the dish, though brown meat stock was also used for brown fish sauces in this period. A dry white wine suits most poached fish, and where the fish has been cooked in wine it makes sense to keep the two consistent.
- Browning the roux"A lump of butter" is imprecise; about 1 tablespoon, to match the tablespoonful of flour, is a workable reading. Stir it over medium heat until it is the color of a hazelnut shell, three to five minutes. Underbrowned, the sauce tastes of raw flour; scorched, it turns bitter and thickens less.
- Combining without lumpsAdd the hot liquid to the roux in stages, or whisk the roux into the simmering liquid a spoonful at a time. Dumping browned roux into a full pan of liquid at once is the usual cause of lumps here.
- Hair sieveA fine horsehair sieve; a fine-mesh conical strainer or chinois does the same job. Lining a standard sieve with a double layer of cheesecloth is an acceptable substitute.
- "By the side of the fire"On a coal range this was the cool zone at the edge of the top. On a modern hob it is the lowest setting, a bare shiver rather than a boil, held five to ten minutes while the fat rises and is skimmed. Skimming is what separates a clean sauce from a greasy one.
- Lemon and cayenne at the endBoth go in after the simmering, at the last moment. Lemon juice added early and cooked loses its lift. A pinch means a pinch: this is a background warmth, not a peppery sauce.
- YieldAbout 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups finished, enough for four to six portions of fish. It is a pouring sauce; if you want it to coat the back of a spoon more heavily, reduce it rather than adding more flour.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maitre d'hotel whose name carried the Waldorf's reputation for some fifty years, put his name to the 1896 Cook Book, a vast compilation drawn from the French repertoire that ran every serious American hotel of the era. A brown sauce for fish looks odd to modern eyes trained on butter and cream, but browned-flour sauces sharpened with lemon and cayenne belonged to the period's fish cookery alongside pale white-wine finishes. The instruction to fold in the cooking liquor is ordinary kitchen economy: nothing that has taken on flavor from the fish gets thrown away.