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Olive Sauce
Drain, rinse in cold water and dry eight mediumsized olives. Chop them fine and add to the above brown sauce just before serving.
Savory Tomato Sauce (for Chops and Fish) 2 tablespoonfuls but-½ teaspoonful salt ter 2 sprigs parsley 2 tablespoonfuls flour 1 slice of onion 6 peppercorns 3 large tomatoes A bit of bay leaf 6 cloves Scald, peel, and cut tomatoes in pieces. Put with them a tablespoonful of water and stew until soft enough to measure. To one and a half cups (if tomato has boiled down to less, add thin stock or hot water to make up deficiency) add the spice and seasoning. Boil all together fifteen minutes.
Strain and add gradually to flour and butter cooked together. Boil up one minute and serve.
Two finishing sauces for reheated poultry and other left-over meats: a handful of chopped olives stirred into a brown sauce, and a spiced fresh-tomato sauce thickened with a butter-and-flour roux.
- "The above brown sauce"The olive sauce is not free-standing; it assumes a basic brown sauce (butter and flour browned, moistened with stock) given just before. The recipe does not state how much sauce is meant, so judge the olives against the volume you have and taste as you go.
- OlivesThe recipe does not say which olives; brined olives, which can be quite salty, are the likely intention, and the rinsing and drying appear to be aimed at keeping brine out of the sauce. Taste for salt before adding any more. Modern pitted green olives work; drain and pat dry as directed.
- Add off the heatAdd at the last moment -- The recipe puts the olives in "just before serving" rather than letting them cook in the sauce; stir them in at the end and serve straight away.
- The tomato measure is the hingeThree large tomatoes will not reliably give a cup and a half of pulp. Stew them down, measure, and top up with thin stock or hot water as the recipe says. Guessing here is what makes the sauce either watery or a paste.
- Spices and strainingThe peppercorns, cloves, bay, parsley and onion are an infusion, not an ingredient; everything is strained out after the fifteen-minute boil. Fifteen minutes with six cloves is assertive by current taste, and halving the cloves gives a milder sauce.
- Roux proportionsTwo tablespoons butter to two tablespoons flour for about a cup and a half of liquid gives a fairly light thickening, thinner than the usual medium-sauce ratio. Cook the flour in the butter, then add the strained tomato gradually to avoid lumps, and boil up a minute as directed.
- YieldThe tomato sauce makes roughly a cup and a half; the olive sauce depends on how much brown sauce you have made, since the recipe does not say.
Cold roast fowl reheated on its own is dry and dull; masked with a brown sauce sharpened by olives, or with a spiced tomato sauce, it becomes a dish that can be sent to table without apology -- though the tomato sauce here is headed "for Chops and Fish." The pattern is a familiar one in the French repertoire that American domestic-science writers drew on, where a sauce aux olives is the basic sauce plus the garnish that names it. The tomato sauce shows the same habit in its whole spices and its strainer: flavour drawn out by infusion and then removed, leaving a smooth sauce with no visible seasoning.