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Sauce for Cutlets
teaspoon pepper 1 pint stock, water, or strained tomato juice 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Make according to directions for white sauce. 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, or lemon juice, or horseradish 1½ pounds veal 2 hard cooked eggs pound ham 1 tablespoon flour 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
This is a cook's shorthand for a sauce built on the book's basic white sauce method, with the milk swapped for stock, water, or tomato juice and the seasoning left to the cook's choice.
- The method it points to"According to directions for white sauce" sends the reader back to the book's basic roux-and-liquid method, which is not repeated here. Butter is not listed in this entry, presumably because the fat and its proportion are given with those earlier directions.
- Quantities are incompleteA pint of liquid needs roughly 4 tablespoons each of fat and flour for a sauce thick enough to coat a cutlet. The single tablespoon of flour that appears in this entry is not enough for a pint and should not be taken as the sauce's own measure.
- A pint is two cupsAmerican pints in books of this period are 16 fluid ounces. That yields a generous sauce for four to six cutlets; halve it for two.
- Choosing the liquidStock gives something close to a veloute, water gives a plain white sauce that leans entirely on the Worcestershire, and strained tomato juice gives something closer to a light tomato sauce. Acid tends to work against a starch-thickened sauce, so a tomato-juice version will not set as firmly.
- Season at the endWorcestershire and lemon juice both dull with long cooking, and horseradish loses its heat outright once heated. Stir any of the three in after the sauce has finished thickening, off the heat.
- SaltOnly pepper is specified. Stock-based versions may need none, but a water-based sauce needs salt added to taste or it will taste of nothing but flour.
Sauces of this kind are the practical end of the French mother-sauce system as it reached American household cookery: one basic roux method given once and then referred back to for a number of variations. A sauce poured over crumbed and fried cutlets did the work of both moistening and dressing up an economical cut. The three-way choice of parsley, lemon, or horseradish, and of stock, water, or tomato juice, leaves the cook to use whatever is in the house.