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Caper Sauce
Mix in a saucepan on the fire one and a half tablespoons butter with two tablespoons flour, then pour in a pint white broth. Season with half teaspoon salt and saltspoon cayenne pepper, mix well for two minutes, then let the sauce reduce to half the quantity, occasionally mixing meanwhile. Add two tablespoons capers, mix a little and let boil for two minutes. Dilute an egg yolk with a half gill cream and add to the sauce, constantly mixing while heating for one minute. Remove, pour into a sauce bowl and serve. N. B. The same quantity of mutton broth can be employed instead of the white broth, but without any salt.
A velouté finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. It is straightforward, but two things decide the result: how far you reduce it and how gently you handle the yolk.
- Do not let it boil after the yolk goes inOnce the diluted yolk is stirred in, keep the sauce below a simmer — around 180F is plenty. A boil will scramble the yolk and leave grainy specks that no amount of whisking will bring back.
- White brothA pale, unroasted stock — veal or chicken, made from bones and aromatics without browning. An unsalted low-sodium chicken stock is the closest supermarket equivalent; anything roasted or dark will muddy the colour.
- Saltspoon and half gillA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. A gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup of cream.
- The reduction is severeTwo tablespoons of flour thickening a pint, then reduced to a cup, gives a very heavy sauce. Reduce to taste rather than by the clock, or slacken it at the end with a little more broth.
- CapersDrain and rinse brined capers before adding, and taste before you salt at all — brine and salt-packed capers both carry a good deal of sodium. Salt-packed ones need a longer soak and a rinse in fresh water.
- The mutton noteMutton broth was often the salted cooking liquor from boiled mutton, which would explain why the recipe drops the added salt. If you are using unsalted stock from lamb, season as normal and check at the end.
- Yield and servingA generous cup of finished sauce once the cream and capers are in. It is a standard accompaniment to boiled mutton or leg of lamb, and works equally on poached white fish or boiled tongue.
Caper sauce belongs to the family of white sauces built on a blond roux and a pale stock — what French kitchens codify as velouté — and the finishing liaison of egg yolk and cream is the treatment associated with allemande, also called sauce parisienne. The capers themselves are the pickled flower buds of Capparis spinosa, a Mediterranean shrub; they reached northern kitchens as an imported pantry good, sold by the bottle in vinegar or packed in salt, and their sharpness is precisely what the sauce is for. The pairing with boiled mutton is a fixture of English cookery, and the book's note about mutton broth may reflect a common practice of the period: the pot the meat came out of supplying the liquid for the sauce that went back over it, already salted from the cooking.