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Sauce for Boiled Fish
To one teacup of milk; add one teacup of water; put it on the fire to scald, and when hot stir in a tablespoon of flour, previously wet with cold water; add two or three eggs; season with salt and pepper, a little celery, vinegar and three tablespoons of butter. Boil four or five eggs hard, take off the shells, and cut in slices, and lay over the dish. Then pour over the sauce and serve.
A plain egg sauce of the sort that went with boiled salmon, halibut or salt cod. The whole thing hinges on the eggs stirred into the hot milk: keep the pan below a simmer or you will have flour-thickened scrambled egg.
- TeacupA Victorian teacup is smaller than a modern mug: reckon 5 to 6 fl oz, so about 3/4 cup each of milk and water. The recipe is forgiving of a little more or less liquid, since the eggs do most of the thickening.
- Adding the eggsBeat the two or three raw eggs first, then temper them with a ladleful of the hot thickened milk before returning everything to the pan over low heat. Stir constantly and pull it off at the first sign of thickening, around 175-180F; it must not boil.
- The flourA tablespoon of flour slaked in cold water is a thin slurry, not a roux. Whisk it into the scalding liquid and let it cook a minute or two before the eggs go in, or the sauce tastes raw and pasty.
- "A little celery"Ambiguous in the original. Period sauces of this type used finely minced celery, celery seed, or celery vinegar; a scant teaspoon of celery seed or a tablespoon of very finely chopped celery heart both work. Whether the following "vinegar" is a separate ingredient or part of "celery vinegar" cannot be settled from the text; if separate, a teaspoon or two at the end will keep it from curdling the milk.
- ButterThree tablespoons is a lot for a cup and a half of sauce and is meant to be. Add it off the heat, a piece at a time, swirling until it emulsifies; this is what gives the sauce its gloss.
- The hard eggsFour or five eggs sliced over the fish is a garnish, not part of the sauce. Ten to twelve minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into cold water, gives firm yolks and keeps the grey ring to a minimum.
- YieldSomewhere between a cup and a half and two cups of sauce. Best served as soon as it is made; an egg-thickened sauce will split if it is boiled or reheated hard.
Egg sauce was a common English and American accompaniment to boiled fish through the nineteenth century, particularly salt cod and salmon, where a white sauce with chopped or sliced hard-boiled egg stood in for the richer butter sauces of French cookery. This version is a hybrid: a milk-and-water sauce thickened with a flour slurry and then further with beaten raw egg, dressed with sliced hard eggs laid over the fish before the sauce is poured on. The Home Cook Book belongs to the genre of subscription cookbooks assembled from contributors' recipes and sold for charitable benefit, which may account for the brevity and the vagueness.