Italian Sauce
Fry two tablespoonfuls of chopped shallots or onions in two ounces butter, until brown; add one pint of mushrooms, one cup of strained tomato sauce, some chopped parsley and the juice of half a lemon; thicken slightly; darken with a few drops of soy and pour around timbales before serving.
A brown butter-and-mushroom sauce meant to be spooned around a molded dish rather than over it. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the measurements are period volume measures and one ingredient does not mean what it looks like.
- Two ounces butterWeight, not fluid ounces: 4 tablespoons, half a stick. Brown the shallots in it patiently over medium heat — the browning is where the sauce gets its color and depth, and rushing it scorches the milk solids.
- A pint of mushroomsA dry volume measure of sliced or quartered caps, roughly 5 to 8 ounces by weight. Cook them until the water they throw off has evaporated, or the finished sauce will be thin and gray.
- Strained tomato sauceIn a cookbook of this period this means plain cooked tomato pushed through a sieve — closest modern equivalent is passata or canned crushed tomatoes put through a strainer. Not a seasoned jarred pasta sauce, which will overwhelm the shallot and mushroom.
- Thicken slightlyThe original assumes you know the method. A teaspoon of soft butter kneaded with a teaspoon of flour, whisked in and simmered a minute or two, is in keeping; simple reduction works as well. The target is a sauce that coats a spoon thinly, not a gravy.
- SoySoy sauce, used here purely as a coloring and savory agent, as Victorian and Edwardian kitchens used it and as they used mushroom ketchup. A few drops means a few drops — it is salty enough to unbalance a cup of sauce quickly, so add at the end and taste.
- Lemon lastLemon -- The original adds the juice along with the mushrooms and tomato sauce. If you want a fresher acidity, add it in the final minute instead; long simmering dulls it, and that acidity is what lifts the butter and browned onion.
- TimbalesSmall molded preparations, typically a forcemeat or a savory custard baked in a mold. The sauce works equally well around anything of that character — a game pie, roast pheasant, chicken croquettes, or polenta.
- YieldRoughly two cups, enough to ring four to six portions. Serve it hot; the butter will separate if it sits, so rewarm gently and swirl rather than boiling it back together.
"Italian sauce" in English and American cookbooks of this period is a translation of the French sauce italienne, a classical brown or half-glaze sauce built on a duxelles of finely chopped mushrooms with shallot, sometimes with ham, tomato and herbs — the name is generally traced to the style rather than to any Italian origin. This version is a simplified household adaptation: no stock, no reduction of wine, tomato sauce standing in for the espagnole base, and soy sauce doing the work of a meat glaze. The soy is worth noting; imported soy had been a staple of British and American store cupboards since the eighteenth century, often used as a bottled darkener for sauces and made dishes. The sauce suits game, which, being lean and strongly flavored, was thought to need browned depth and a squeeze of acid to cut it.