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Recipes: Muscat
No. 7. Ham Sauce, Salsa di Prosciutto Ingredients: Ham, Muscat or sweet port, vinegar, basil, spice.
Cut up an ounce of ham and pound it in a mortar, then mix it with three dessertspoonsful of port or Muscat and a teaspoonful of vinegar, a little dried basil and a pinch of spice. Boil it up, and then pass it through a sieve and warm it up in a bain-marie.
Serve with roast meats. If you cannot get a sweet wine add half a teaspoonful of sugar. Australian Muscat is a good wine to use.
No. 8. Tarragon Sauce Ingredients: Tarragon, stock, butter, flour.
To half a pint of good stock add two good sprays of fresh tarragon, simmer for quarter of an hour in a stewpan and keep the lid on.
In another stewpan melt one ounce of butter and mix it with three dessertspoonsful of flour, then gradually pour the stock from the first stewpan over it, but take out the tarragon. Mix well, add a teaspoonful of finely chopped tarragon and boil for two minutes.
No. 9. Tomato Sauce Ingredients: Tomatoes, ham, onions, basil, salt, oil, garlic, spices.
Broil three tomatoes, skin them and mix them with a tablespoonful of chopped ham, half an onion, salt, a dessertspoonful of oil, a little pounded spice and basil. Then boil and pass through a sieve.
Whilst the sauce is boiling, put in a clove of garlic with a cut, but remove it before you pass the sauce through the sieve.
No. 10. Tomato Sauce Piquante Ingredients: Ham, butter, onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, thyme, cloves, peppercorns, vinegar, Chablis, stock, tomatoes, Veluté or Espagnole sauce, castor sugar, lemon.
Cut up an ounce of ham, half an onion, half a carrot, half a stick of celery very fine, and fry them in butter together with a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, one clove and four peppercorns. Over this pour a third of a cup of vinegar, and when the liquid is all absorbed, add half a glass of Chablis and a cup of stock.
Then add six tomatoes cut up and strained of all their liquid. Cook this in a covered stewpan and pass it through a sieve, but see that none of the bay leaf or thyme goes through. Mix this sauce with an equal quantity of Veluté (No. 2) or Espagnole sauce, (No. 1), let it boil and pass through a sieve again and at the last add a teaspoonful of castor sugar, the juice of half a lemon, and an ounce of fresh butter. (Another tomato sauce may be made like this, but use stock instead of vinegar and leave out the lemon juice and sugar.) No. II. Mushroom Sauce Ingredients: Veluté sauce, essence of mushrooms, butter.
Mix two dessert-spoonsful of essence of mushrooms with a cupful of Veluté sauce (No. 2), reduce, keep on stirring, and just before serving add an ounce of butter. This sauce can be made with essence of truffle, or game, or shallot.
No. 12. Neapolitan Sauce Ingredients: Onions, ham, butter, Marsala, blond of veal, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, cloves, mushrooms, Espagnole sauce (No. 1), tomato sauce, game stock or essence.
Fry an onion in butter with some bits of cut-up ham, then pour a glass of Marsala over it, and another of blond of veal, add a sprig of thyme, a bay leaf, four peppercorns, a clove, a tablespoonful of mushroom cuttings, and reduce half. In another saucepan put two cups of Espagnole sauce, one cupful of tomato sauce, and half a cup of game stock or essence. Reduce a third, and add the contents of the first saucepan, boil the sauce a few minutes, and pass it through a sieve. Warm it up in a bain-marie before using.
No. 13. Neapolitan Anchovy Sauce Ingredients :
Anchovies, fennel, flour, spices, parsley, marjoram, garlic, lemon juice, vinegar, cream.
Wash three anchovies in vinegar, bone and pound them in a mortar with a teaspoonful of chopped fennel and a pinch of cinnamon.
Then mix in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley and marjoram, a squeeze of lemon juice, a teaspoonful of flour, half a gill of boiled cream and the bones of the fish for which you will use this sauce. Pass through a sieve, add a clove of garlic with a cut in it, and boil. If the fish you are using is cooked in the oven, add a little of the liquor in IOI which it has been cooked to the sauce.
Take out the garlic before serving. Instead of anchovies you may use caviar, pickled tunny, or any other pickled fish.
No. 14. Roman Sauce (Salsa Agro-dolce) Ingredients :
Espagnole sauce, stock, burnt sugar, vinegar, raisins, pine nuts or almonds.
Mix two spoonsful of burnt sugar with one of vinegar, and dilute with a little good stock.
Then add two cups of Espagnole sauce (No. 1), a few stoned raisins, and a few pinocchi 1 (pine nuts) or shredded almonds. Keep this hot in a bain-marie, and serve with cutlets, calf's head or feet or tongue.
No. 15. Roman Sauce (another way) Ingredients: Espagnole sauce, an onion, butter, flour, lemon, herbs, nutmeg, raisins, pine nuts or almonds, burnt sugar.
Cut up a small bit of onion, 1 The pinocchi which Italians use instead of almonds can be bought in London when in season. fry it slightly in butter and a little flour, add the juice of a lemon and a little of the peel grated, a bouquet of herbs, a pinch of nutmeg, a few stoned raisins, shredded almonds or pinocchi, and a tablespoonful of burnt sugar. Add this to a good Espagnole (No. 1), and warm it up in a bainmarie.
No. 16. Suprême Sauce Ingredients: White sauce, fowl stock, butter.
Put three - quarters of a pint of white sauce into a saucepan, and when it is nearly boiling add half a cup of concentrated fowl stock. Reduce until the sauce is quite thick, and when about to serve pass it through a tamis into a bain-marie and add two tablespoonsful of cream.
No. 17. Pasta Marinata (For masking Italian Frys) Ingredients: Semolinaflour, eggs, salt, butter (or olive oil), vinegar, water.
Mix the following ingredients well together: Five ounces of semolina flour, the yolks of two eggs, a little salt, and two ounces of melted butter. Add a glass of water so as to form a liquid substance. At the last add the whites of two eggs beaten up to a snow. This will make a good paste for masking meat, fish, vegetables, or sweets which are to be fried in the Italian manner, but if for meat or vegetables add a few drops of vinegar or a little lemon juice.
No. 18. White Villeroy Ingredients: Butter, flour, eggs, cream, nutmeg, white stock. of of Make a light-coloured roux by frying two ounces of butter and two ounces flour, stir in some white stock and keep it very smooth. Let it boil, and add the yolks of three eggs, mixed with two tablespoonsful of cream and a pinch of nutmeg. Pass it through a sieve and use for masking cutlets, fish, &c.
A run of Anglo-Italian sauces from the turn of the century, written for a kitchen that kept stock, Espagnole and Velouté on hand at all times. The measurements are Edwardian and several of the recipes are really variations built on the two mother sauces numbered earlier in the book.
- The dessertspoonfulA dessertspoon is two teaspoons, roughly 10 ml — between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. Three dessertspoonsful of port in the ham sauce is about 2 tablespoons; three of flour in the tarragon sauce is about 2 tablespoons, which with 1 oz butter gives a roux for half a pint of stock.
- Gills and glassesAn imperial gill is 5 fl oz, so half a gill of cream is about 1/3 cup. "A glass" of Marsala or Chablis is nowhere defined in these recipes, and the quantity is left to the cook's judgement.
- You need Nos. 1 and 2 firstThe Neapolitan, Roman, Piquante and mushroom sauces all assume you already have Espagnole or Velouté made. Neither is a five-minute job — Espagnole is a brown roux and brown stock reduced for hours. Without them, Nos. 7, 8, 9, 13, 17 and 18 stand alone, and No. 16 needs only a white sauce and fowl stock.
- Blond of vealA pale veal stock, made from bones and trimmings that have not been browned. A light unsalted veal or chicken stock stands in.
- Burnt sugarCaramel cooked to the dark, bitter stage and let down with water — the period's colouring and bittering agent, not a syrup. Sold then as gravy browning; caramel colour or your own dark caramel does the job in the two Roman sauces.
- Essence of mushrooms, truffle, gameBottled concentrated infusions, standard grocer's stock in 1900 and largely gone. Substitute a hard-reduced mushroom or game stock; commercial mushroom ketchup is saltier and sharper, so use less and taste.
- Broil the tomatoesIn British usage of the period this means grilling over or under direct heat until the skins blister and lift. Modern broiler on high, or an open flame.
- Tamis and sieveA tamis is a drum-shaped cloth strainer through which sauce is forced with a wooden spoon; a fine chinois or a conical strainer with the back of a ladle gives the same result. Where the text says to keep bay leaf and thyme from going through, that is a real warning — pushed through, they turn the sauce bitter and speckled.
- Bain-marieHere simply a bowl or covered pan standing in hot water, used to hold finished sauces without further reduction or splitting. No. 18 is finished with egg yolks and cream and No. 10 with butter at the last; neither should be reboiled after that enrichment.
- The anchovy sauce needs judgementIt calls for the bones of the fish being served to be mixed in and then sieved out. Strain it very thoroughly; small bone fragments pass a coarse sieve easily. Half a gill of cream and a teaspoonful of flour make a small quantity — enough for two, not a table.
- YieldsNone is given. The ham sauce (No. 7) makes only a few spoonsful, a condiment for two or three plates. The tarragon and Suprême sauces make about half a pint, enough for four; the Neapolitan makes closer to a pint.
These sauces come from The Cook's Decameron, published in London in 1901 under the name of Mrs W. G. Waters, which frames a collection of Italian dishes inside a Boccaccio-style conceit: a company shut up together, telling and exchanging recipes over ten days. The kitchen it describes is Italian cooking translated into the vocabulary of the French professional repertoire.