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Fleurette Sauce
Heat in a small saucepan two tablespoons melted butter, add one and a half tablespoons sifted flour, stir well with a wooden spoon for one minute, then add one gill hot milk and half gill of the fish stock (broth); mix well with a whisk for five minutes. Season with two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper and half saltspoon grated nutmeg. Mix well and let boil for five minutes. Add one teaspoon chopped parsley and one teaspoon chopped chives (ciboulette). Mix well again, add half ounce of good butter by very small bits and seven drops lemon juice. Mix well again and use as required.
A small fish velouté finished with cold butter and herbs. It comes together in about fifteen minutes and the only difficulty is the seasoning, which needs scaling to modern palates.
- The measuresA gill is half a cup, so the sauce takes 1/2 cup hot milk and 1/4 cup fish stock. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- CayenneA full saltspoon of cayenne, a quarter teaspoon, in roughly three-quarters of a cup of sauce is aggressive by current standards. Start with a pinch and adjust at the end; the same goes for the nutmeg.
- The hinge: butter off the heatThe final half ounce of butter is a monter au beurre finish. Pull the pan from the heat, drop the cold butter in a few bits at a time and swirl rather than boil, or the sauce breaks and loses its gloss.
- Boiling the roux sauceFive minutes of whisking and five more at a boil is not excessive here; it cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens the sauce properly. Keep the heat moderate and whisk the bottom, since a quantity this small scorches quickly.
- Fish stockA quick fumet from fish bones and trimmings simmered twenty minutes is closer to the original than a cube. The poaching liquid from the fish the sauce will accompany is better still.
- CibouletteSimply French for chives. Both herbs go in near the end so they keep their colour.
- LemonSeven drops is a very small amount, well under a quarter teaspoon. It is meant to sharpen rather than to taste of lemon.
- YieldRoughly three-quarters of a cup, enough to nap two to four fillets. Serve at once; reheating will separate the butter finish.
The name points to crème fleurette, the thin unwhipped cream of French dairying; this one is a small fish velouté, the classic white roux loosened with milk and fish broth rather than the cream its name suggests. It belongs to the family of derivative sauces that a professional kitchen of the period produced by the dozen from a few base preparations, each distinguished by a garnish or a finish rather than by a different method. Filippini's book grew out of a career in American hotel and restaurant cooking, where French technique was the working language of the kitchen, and the parenthetical gloss of ciboulette shows the audience he expected: English-speaking households being taught to read a French repertoire. The butter-by-bits finish and the seven counted drops of lemon are the marks of that training, where a sauce was judged on shine and balance at the last moment before it left the stove.