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Orange Sauce
(Spanish. For game.) Parboil the outer yellow rind of 2 large oranges. Drain these, cut into thin strips, and add the juice and a glass of port wine and 1/2 cup of white stock. Cook ten minutes, strain, and then add salt and pepper, if desired. Serve, separately, in a bowl.
MONTPELLIER BUTTER (for garnishing cold fish, jellies, or filling sandwiches.).
Mix 1/2 pound of parsley, tarragon, watercress, and chives, in equal parts. Boil them one minute in hot water, drain and chop them very fine, with the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs, 3 anchovies, free from skin and bones, 1 tablespoonful each of capers and gherkins, chopped fine, a little onion juice, salt, and pepper. Pound these and add 1/2 pound of fresh butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of olive oil, and 1 tablespoonful of lemon juice. Mix all well and press through a sieve. Set on ice until needed. It is usually pressed through a pastry tube, to form roses, along the edge of the dish, or on top of the fish.
ESSENCE OF HAM (used for flavoring sauces.).
This will keep some time on ice. Chop 3 pounds of lean ham with 4 onions, 2 carrots, 2 parsnips, 4 mushrooms (or a tablespoonful of mushroom catchup.), and add 1 ounce of butter, 3 truffles, 1 cup of veal stock, 1 clove, and some thyme and parsley. Stir, cover very closely, and simmer 1 hour. Strain it through a fine sieve. A tablespoonful will flavor a pint of sauce or as much soup.
FAMILY CULLIS. (Old English recipe for foundation of sauces.) Blend 1 tablespoonful each of flour and butter, add 1 cup of good consomme, a glass of white wine, some parsley, thyme, a bayleaf, and a bit of mace, also 3 mushrooms, salt, and pepper. Cook, covered, for 1/2 hour. Strain through a sieve. Will keep some time on ice, and useful for adding flavor to entrees or sauces.
Four separate compound sauces run together in one block of text; each stands alone. The orange sauce is the quickest and the one most worth making today.
- A glass of wineIn cookbooks of this period a wine glass is roughly 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup. For the orange sauce, 1/4 cup of port against 1/2 cup of stock and the juice of two oranges is a plausible reading of the balance the recipe intends.
- Parboil the zest, and mean itThe blanch of the pared rind is the hinge of the orange sauce; the recipe sets no time, so a short boil will do. Skipped, the pith and oils turn the finished sauce bitter and it will not correct with sugar or salt. Pare only the yellow layer, blanch, drain, then cut into fine julienne.
- White stockAn unroasted veal or chicken stock, pale and lightly gelatinous. A good unsalted chicken stock stands in. Since the sauce reduces only ten minutes it will not thicken much; expect a thin, glossy, spooning sauce rather than a coating one.
- Yield and serviceThe orange sauce makes a scant cup, enough for four servings of duck, venison or other game. Served separately in a bowl, as directed, it is meant to be spooned over at the table.
- Montpellier butter proportionsHalf a pound is the untrimmed weight of several bunches of mixed herbs; picked leaves will come to far less. Blanch one minute only, as the recipe directs, then squeeze dry hard before chopping, or the water will break the butter.
- Pounding, then and nowThe mortar work for Montpellier butter is a food processor job: herbs, egg yolks, anchovy, capers and gherkins first, then the softened butter, oil and lemon. Pressing through a sieve afterwards is still worth doing if you intend to pipe it, since a stray caper stem will block a fine tube.
- Essence of ham and mushroom catchupMushroom catchup is a thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquid, still sold and not interchangeable with tomato ketchup. Three pounds of ham simmered down yields a very salty concentrate; add no salt anywhere until the finished sauce is tasted.
- "Will keep some time on ice"An icebox ran around 45-50F, and the phrase assumed daily replenishment. Treat both the ham essence and the cullis as fresh stock: refrigerate below 40F and use within three or four days, or freeze in tablespoon portions, which suits the stated dosage of one spoonful per pint of sauce.
- CullisA blond roux loosened with consomme and wine and simmered half an hour is a small velouté by another name. Cook the flour and butter a minute or two before adding liquid, or the finished sauce tastes of raw flour.
These four entries are the working scaffolding of a nineteenth-century professional kitchen set down for a domestic cook. Cullis is the anglicised coulis, which in older French usage meant a strained meat-based foundation rather than the fruit or vegetable pur he term long appear in English cookery writing, and by the time this book was written it was already labelled "old English." Beurre de Montpellier belongs to the cold buffet tradition of the same era, when a poached salmon or a glazed galantine was expected to arrive under piped green butter, and its anchovy-and-herb makeup places it among the herb butters codified in the grand French repertoire. The orange sauce with port for game reflects a long-standing pairing of sharp citrus and fortified wine with rich dark meat; the Spanish attribution here is the book's own, and the sauces are gathered from several cuisines under one heading.</p>