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Fine Herbs Sauce
One tablespoonful of chopped onion, two of chopped mushrooms, one of chopped parsley, two of butter, salt, pepper, one pint of white sauce. Put the butter and chopped ingredients in a saucepan and stir for one minute over the fire. Add the sauce and boil up once.
A quick compound sauce built on a pint of white sauce — the sort of thing a period kitchen kept ready in a pot. Everything here depends on the base sauce being made first.
- White sauce, one pintThe recipe assumes you already have a plain white sauce to hand. A standard period version is roughly 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour cooked together, then 2 cups of milk whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. A pint is 2 cups, and the recipe gives you no more guidance than that, so season the base before the herbs go in.
- "Fine herbs"An anglicised fines herbes. Note that the classic French mix — parsley, chervil, chives, tarragon — is not what is called for here; this version is onion, mushroom and parsley, closer to a duxelles.
- Chop fine, and no finer than neededThe mushrooms and onion cook for barely a minute, so they must be minced small or they will be raw and crunchy in a smooth sauce. A brunoise-fine dice is the target.
- One minute is shortA minute of stirring softens the onion only slightly and drives off almost no mushroom liquid. If you want a rounder flavour, give the onion and mushroom three or four minutes over medium heat until the pan looks dry, then add the sauce.
- Boil up onceThis means bring it just to the boil and take it off. A flour-thickened sauce held at a boil will thin and can catch on the bottom; the single boil is there to marry the flavours, not to reduce.
- Add the parsley lateChopped parsley loses its colour and freshness in hot fat. Stirring it in after the sauce goes in, or off the heat at the end, keeps the sauce green-flecked rather than khaki.
- Butter measureTwo tablespoons is 1 oz, about 28 g. Period tablespoons could run a little larger than the modern 15 ml, but not enough to matter in a sauce this forgiving.
- YieldAbout two cups, enough to sauce four to six portions of roast or braised game. It thickens as it cools; loosen with a spoonful of stock or cream when reheating.
Sauces of this kind lean on a batch of plain white sauce that could be divided and turned into several different sauces by the addition of chopped aromatics, capers, cheese or wine. The name is a loose translation of the French aux fines herbes, which in English cookbooks was often used loosely for almost any finely chopped savoury garnish rather than the specific French quartet of parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon. Mushroom and onion cooked in butter is close to a duxelles, which survives today in everything from stuffed mushrooms to beef Wellington.