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Mushroom Sauce (Melt one tablespoonful)
Melt one tablespoonful of butter, add one tablespoonful of flour, and when bubbling stir in slowly one cup of rich milk, beating constantly until the sauce thickens. Season with one-quarter teaspoonful of salt, a dash of cayenne, and a little celery salt. Add one-half can of chopped mushrooms.
A plain white sauce with canned mushrooms stirred through, meant to carry cold roast chicken or turkey. It comes together in about ten minutes and the only real risks are lumps and a raw-flour taste.
- Cook the roux firstLet the butter and flour bubble together for a good minute or two before any milk goes in. Skipping this leaves a pasty, floury flavour that no amount of seasoning will hide.
- Yield and consistencyOne tablespoon each of butter and flour to one cup of milk is a thin pouring sauce, which is what you want over sliced poultry. It makes something over a cup once the mushrooms go in, enough for two to three servings; double it for a family dish.
- "Rich milk"This meant milk that had not been skimmed, closer to today's whole milk with a splash of cream. Whole milk works; half-and-half gives the body the original author probably had.
- Half a can of mushroomsHalf of a modern 4 oz can of pieces and stems, drained, is a reasonable reading of "half a can"; roughly a quarter cup. Fresh mushrooms sautéed in a little extra butter until their liquid has cooked off are better still.
- Drain, or thin deliberatelyCanned mushroom liquor will slacken the sauce and dull its colour. Drain them, or add a spoonful of the liquid on purpose in place of some of the milk for more mushroom flavour.
- Celery salt and cayenneBoth were pantry staples then and both are salt-forward or sharp. Add the quarter teaspoon of salt last, after the celery salt, and taste before committing.
- Beating constantlyAdd the milk in a slow stream with the pan at medium heat, whisking. If lumps form anyway, a stick blender or a quick pass through a sieve fixes it before the mushrooms go in.
Left-over cookery was a distinct genre in American and British household publishing from the 1890s through the First World War, and a good white sauce was its engine: it turned yesterday's roast fowl into creamed chicken, a chafing-dish supper, or a filling for patty shells and toast. That this recipe reaches for a can rather than a basket of mushrooms is itself a period marker. Commercially canned mushrooms were sold in the United States in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, much of the early supply imported from France, and they let an ordinary household season a sauce with something that had recently been a luxury. Celery salt belongs to the same moment, a manufactured convenience seasoning that appears constantly in cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s.