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Chicken-Liver Sandwiches
See page 231.
Most made-over dishes are dependent upon some kind of a sauce to make them acceptable; it is therefore quite essential that the cook be familiar with the simple foundation sauces. This knowledge gained, it is an easy matter to prepare any of the more elaborate ones.
A good sauce is always perfectly smooth and properly flavored. The smoothness is secured by drawing the saucepan from the high heat and adding the liquid slowly to the blended flour and fat, beating and stirring constantly until the sauce thickens. The flavoring is best secured by utilizing all odd bits of meat, fish, bones, and vegetables to make savory stock, or by cooking a few chopped vegetables carefully in the fat and removing them before the flour is added.
The use of potato flour for sauces, in the same proportions as wheat flour, is recommended, as it gives excellent results with much less cooking.
All measures of butter should be level.
White Sauce No. 1 (for Omelets, Cream Soups, Toast) ¼ tablespoonful butter 1 teaspoonful salt 1 tablespoonful flour teaspoonful white 1 cup milk pepper White Sauce No. 1 A (for Scalloped Dishes and Omelets) 1 tablespoonfuls but-1 teaspoonful salt ter teaspoonful white 1 tablespoonfuls flour pepper 1 cup milk White Sauce No. 2 (for Creamed Meats, Fish, Vegetables, Toast) 2 tablespoonfuls but- 1 teaspoonful salt ter 2 tablespoonfuls flour teaspoonful white pepper 1 cup milk White Sauce No. 3 (for Soufflés) 3 tablespoonfuls but- 1/4 teaspoonful salt ter 3 tablespoonfuls flour teaspoonful white pepper 1 cup milk White Sauce No. 4 (for Croquettes) 4 tablespoonfuls but- 1/4 teaspoonful salt ter 4 tablespoonfuls flour teaspoonful white 1 cup milk pepper Melt the butter, stir in the flour and seasoning, and cook slowly without browning until the mixture bubbles. Remove from the high heat, add the milk gradually, beating and stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.
This is the foundation-sauce page of the book: five ratios of butter and flour to one cup of milk, from a thin pouring sauce to a paste stiff enough to bind croquettes. The method is the same for all five.
- The ratios in plain termsPer cup of milk: No. 1 is 1 tablespoon each butter and flour (thin, pourable); No. 2 is 2 and 2 (standard cream sauce); No. 3 is 3 and 3 (thick, for souffle bases); No. 4 is 4 and 4 (a panada that sets firm when chilled, for croquettes). No. 1 A is placed between Nos. 1 and 2, though its quantities as printed here are garbled.
- The hinge: off the heat before the milkPulling the pan from high heat before adding liquid is the whole trick here. The roux stops cooking, the first splash of milk disperses instead of seizing, and the sauce comes up smooth without straining.
- Cold or hot milkEither works if it goes in gradually. Cold milk into a warm roux gives you the widest margin against lumps; scalded milk thickens faster but wants more vigorous whisking.
- Cook the flour out"Until the mixture bubbles" is the minimum. Give the roux two to three minutes of gentle foaming before the milk, and simmer the finished sauce another two or three minutes, or it will taste of raw flour.
- Level measuresThe book specifies level measures only for the butter; the same is presumably intended for the flour. At the No. 4 ratio a heaped spoon or two throws the binding paste off.
- Potato flourPotato starch, still sold for baking and thickening. Substituted spoon for spoon it thickens at a lower temperature and in less time, but it thins if held at a hard boil, so add it late and keep the heat low.
- SeasoningAs printed, salt runs to 1 teaspoonful per cup of milk in the first sauces and 1/4 teaspoonful in Nos. 3 and 4; the larger figure may well be a misprint for a fraction. Either way a full teaspoon is heavy by current taste, particularly over already-salted leftover meat. Start with a quarter teaspoon and correct at the end.
- YieldEach ratio makes roughly a cup of sauce; at the No. 2 strength that is about enough to dress two cups of diced cooked poultry or vegetables, though the book gives no such figure.
Graded white sauces of this kind are the visible mark of early twentieth-century domestic-science teaching, which took the French mother-sauce idea and reduced it to a numbered table a student could memorise: graded spoonfuls of fat and flour to a cup of milk, each number with its own list of uses. In a book devoted to left-overs the table is doing real work, since almost every made-over dish in such volumes depends on a sauce to bind yesterday's roast, fish or vegetables into something that reads as a new dish. The advice to build flavour from bones, trimmings and a few vegetables sweated in the fat is the same thrift extended to the sauce itself, and the recommendation of potato flour reflects a period when wheat flour was a household economy worth avoiding where a starch would do.