Sauces : Part 1

Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery: A Manual of Cheap and Wholesome Diet
By A. G. Payne

(Page 3 of 19)

Sauce Allemande. - Take a pint of butter sauce - (see Butter Sauce) - and add to it four yolks of eggs. In order to do this you must beat up the yolks separately in a basin and add the hot butter sauce gradually, otherwise the yolks of eggs will curdle and the sauce will be spoilt. In fact, it must be treated exactly like custard and in warming up the sauce it is often a good plan, if you have no bain-marie, to put the sauce in a jug and place the jug in a saucepan of boiling water. The sauce should be flavored with a little essence of mushroom if possible. Essence of mushroom can be made from the trimmings of mushrooms, but mushroom ketchup must not be used on account of the color. Essence of mushroom can be made by placing the trimmings of mushrooms in a saucepan, stewing them gently and extracting the flavor.

The large black mushrooms, however, are not suited. In addition to this essence of mushroom, a little lemon juice - allowing the juice of half a lemon to every pint, should be added to the sauce, as well as a slight suspicion of nutmeg, a pint of sauce requiring about a dozen grates of a nutmeg. A little cream is a great improvement to this sauce, but is not absolutely necessary. The sauce should be perfectly smooth. Should it therefore contain any lumps, which is not infrequently the case in butter sauce, pass the sauce through a sieve with a wooden spoon and then put it by in a bain-marie, or warm it up in a jug as directed.

Almond Sauce. - This is suitable for puddings. The simplest way of making it is to make, say half a pint of butter sauce, or, cheaper, thicken half a pint of milk with a little corn-flour, sweeten it with white sugar and then add a few drops of essence of almonds. About a dozen drops will be sufficient if the essence is strong, but essence of almonds varies greatly in strength. The sauce can be colored pink with a few drops of cochineal.

Almond Sauce (Clear). - Thicken half a pint of water with a little corn-flour, sweeten it with white sugar, add a dozen drops of essence of almonds and a few drops of cochineal to color it pink. The sauce is very suitable to pour over custard puddings made in a basin or cup and turned out on to a dish. It is also very cheap.

Apple Sauce. - Peel say a dozen apples; cut them into quarters; and be very careful in removing all the core, as many a child is choked through carelessness in this respect. Stew the apples in a little water till they become a pulp, placing with them half a dozen cloves and half a dozen strips of the yellow part only of the outside of the rind of a fresh lemon of the size and thickness of the thumb-nail; sweeten with brown sugar, that known as Porto Rico being the most economical. Add a small piece of butter before serving.

Arrowroot Sauce. - Thicken half a pint of water with about a dessert spoonful of arrowroot and sweeten it with white sugar. The sauce can be flavored by rubbing a few lumps of sugar on the outside of a lemon, or with a few drops of essence of vanilla, or with the addition of a little sherry or spirit, the best spirit being rum. This sauce can, of course, be colored pink with cochineal.

Artichoke Sauce. - Proceed exactly as if you were making artichoke soup, only make the puree thicker by using less liquid. A simple artichoke sauce can be made by boiling down a few Jerusalem artichokes to a pulp, rubbing them through a wire sieve and flavoring with pepper and salt.

Asparagus Sauce. - Boil a bundle of asparagus and rub all the green, tender part through a wire sieve, till it is a thick pulp, flavor with a little pepper and salt, add a small piece of butter and a little spinach extract (vegetable coloring sold in bottles) in order to give it a good color.

Bread Sauce. - Take some dry crumb of bread and rub through a wire sieve. The simplest plan is to turn the wire sieve upside down on a large sheet of paper. The bread must be stale and stale pieces can be put by for this purpose. Next take, say, a pint of milk and let it boil; then throw in the bread-crumbs and let them boil in the milk. This is the secret of good bread sauce. Add a dozen peppercorns and place a whole onion in the saucepan containing the bread and milk and place the saucepan beside the fire in order to allow the bread-crumbs to swell. It will be found that though at starting the bread sauce was quite thin and milky, yet after a time it becomes thick. Take out the onion, add a little piece of butter, stir it up and serve. A little cream is a great improvement, but is not absolutely necessary. This sauce, though very simple, requires care: Many people will probably recollect having met with bread sauce which in appearance resembled a poultice too much to be agreeable either to the palate or the eye.

Butter Sauce. - This is the most important of all the sauces with which we have to deal. The great mistake made by the vast majority of women cooks is that they will use milk. They thicken a pint of milk with a little butter and flour and then call it melted butter, and, as a rule, send to table enough for twenty people when only two or three are dining. As butter sauce will be served with the majority of vegetables, we would call the attention of vegetarians to the fact that, as a rule, ordinary cookery-books take for granted that vegetables will be served with the meat. When therefore vegetables are served separately and are intended to be eaten with bread as a course by themselves, some alteration must be made in the method of serving them.

Again, vegetarians should bear in mind that, except in cases where poverty necessitates rigid economy, a certain amount of butter may be considered almost a necessity, should the meal be wished to be both wholesome and nourishing. Francatelli, who was chef-de-cuisine to the Earl of Chesterfield and was also chief cook to the Queen and chef at the Reform Club and afterwards manager of the Freemasons' Tavern, in writing on this subject observes: - "Butter sauce, or, as it is more absurdly called, melted butter, is the foundation of the whole of the following sauces and requires very great care in its preparation. Though simple, it is nevertheless a very useful and agreeable sauce when properly made.

So far from this being usually the case, it is too generally left to assistants to prepare, as an insignificant matter; the result is therefore seldom satisfactory. When a large quantity of butter sauce is required, put four ounces of fresh butter into a middle-sized stew-pan, with some grated nutmeg and minionette pepper; to these add four ounces of sifted flour, knead the whole well together and moisten with a pint of cold spring water; stir the sauce on the fire till it boils and after having kept it gently boiling for twenty minutes (observing that it be not thicker than the consistency of common white sauce), proceed to mix in one pound and a half of sweet fresh butter, taking care to stir the sauce quickly the whole time of the operation. Should it appear to turn oily, add now and then a spoonful of cold spring water; finish with the juice of half a lemon and salt to palate; then pass the sauce through a tammy into a large bain-marie for use."

Cassell & Company, Limited: London, Paris & Melbourne. 1891.