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White Sauce for Fowls
Miss Brokovski.
Take half a pint of cream, and put some flour and butter mixed together to thicken it, some nutmeg grated, cayenne pepper, and some oyster or cucumber catsupor a little of both; stir it over the fire till it thickens.
A thickened cream sauce for boiled or roast fowl, written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed the reader already knew the proportions. The gaps are all in quantity, and they are easy to fill.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup. Use heavy or whipping cream; the sauce is meant to be rich and will hold up to boiling better than light cream.
- Flour and butter mixed togetherThis is beurre manié — equal parts soft butter and flour kneaded to a paste, then whisked into the hot cream in small pieces. About one tablespoon of each will thicken a cup of cream to coating consistency.
- Oyster catsupA thin, salty condiment of pounded oysters, their liquor, vinegar and spice, once sold bottled and now essentially gone from shops. A tablespoon of Asian oyster sauce thinned with a little vinegar, or a teaspoon of anchovy paste plus a splash of the liquor from a tin of oysters, gives the same savoury lift.
- Cucumber catsupAnother vanished sauce, more often made at home than bought, from grated cucumber salted and spiced. Nothing modern replaces it exactly; a small spoonful of good pickle brine gets close to the sharp, green note it contributed.
- SeasoningNo salt is listed; both catsups were salty enough that it may have been thought unnecessary. If you substitute, taste at the end -- the cayenne should register as warmth behind the nutmeg, not as heat.
- Stir it over the fireModerate heat and constant motion. Cream sauces thickened with beurre manié need to reach a bare simmer for a minute or two to lose the raw flour taste, but a hard boil will break the cream and toughen the surface.
- YieldAbout a cup of finished sauce, enough for one roast or boiled chicken serving four. Strain it if the nutmeg or the catsup leaves it gritty.
Pale sauces of this kind belonged to boiled fowl, which was standard invalid and company food in the nineteenth century and needed something to relieve its blandness. What dates the recipe is the pair of catsups: before tomato took the word over, "catsup" meant any thin bottled condiment built on a strongly flavoured base u2014 mushroom, walnut, oyster, cucumber u2014 kept in the store cupboard to season sauces and gravies at a stroke. Oyster catsup in particular was a way of holding shellfish flavour through a season when fresh oysters were not to hand. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from recipes contributed by named local women and sold for charity, which is why this one arrives under Miss Brokovski's name, its proportions left to the cook's judgement.