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Yellow Sauce
Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan. When it has melted, stir in one tablespoonful of flour that has been mixed with a little milk, and stir this over the fire until well mixed, but not browned at all; then pour in by degrees, while still stirring, one pint of milk and white stock, mixed in equal quantities, add one large carrot cut into halves, one small onion, a few sprigs of parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Put into the sauce whatever meat is intended for the fricassee, and stew it gently by the side of the fire until tender, with the lid placed tightly on the saucepan. Strain the sauce through a silk sieve into another saucepan, thicken it with the yolks of two eggs, and squeeze in the juice of half a lemon. Serve while hot. Sweet Sauces for Puddings, etc. Apple Sauce A few good "falling" apples are to be sliced and placed in a saucepan with sufficient water to cover the apples, then stew with the lid on until well done, say about half an hour. While stewing put in a small lump of butter and mash with a silver fork or spoon. No sugar is to be added.
A classic velouté-style fricassee sauce finished with an egg-yolk liaison. The page also carries the opening of the sweet-sauce section, so an apple sauce has run on at the end.
- The hinge: the yolks must not boilOnce the yolks go in, the sauce cannot return to a simmer or it will curdle into scrambled egg. Beat the yolks with a ladleful of the hot strained sauce first, stir that back into the pan off the direct heat, and bring it only to about 175F, thick enough to coat a spoon.
- Lemon lastAdd the lemon juice after the yolks and off the heat. Acid added early, or into a sauce still on a hard heat, encourages the milk and the yolks to break.
- White stockUnroasted veal or chicken stock, pale and unsalted. A good low-sodium chicken broth stands in; season only at the end, since the sauce reduces while the meat stews.
- "By the side of the fire"On a coal range this was the cool zone. On a modern hob it means the lowest setting, with the lid on — a bare tremble, not a simmer, so the meat stays tender and the milk does not catch.
- Roux proportionTwo tablespoons butter to one of flour is deliberately butter-heavy and gives a thin, pourable sauce; the yolks do most of the final thickening. Blending the flour with a little milk first, as directed, avoids lumps.
- Silk sieveA fine-mesh conical strainer (chinois) or a sieve lined with damp muslin. The point is to remove the carrot, onion and parsley and any flour specks before the liaison goes in.
- YieldThe pint of mixed milk and stock, less whatever is lost to the meat and the straining, makes a little under 2 cups of finished sauce.
- The apple sauce that followsA "falling" apple is a cooking variety that collapses to a purée, such as a Bramley or Gravenstein. The recipe is explicit that no sugar is added, though it is printed under the heading "Sweet Sauces for Puddings, etc."
Yellow sauce belongs to the family the French call velouté, here finished with egg yolks and lemon in the manner of a sauce poulette; the yolks give the colour the name records. Its natural home is the fricassee, where the meat is cooked in the sauce rather than browned first, so that both stay pale — hence the instruction that the roux is not to be browned at all. The book is The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896); Oscar Tschirky joined the Waldorf at its opening in 1893 as maître d'hôtel. The method assumes a range with a hot centre and a cooler edge. The abrupt appearance of apple sauce at the end is an artifact of the book's layout: the sweet-sauce section begins on the same page.