SAUCES.
TALLEYRAND said England was a country with twenty-four religions and
only one sauce. He might have said two sauces, and he would have been
literally right as regards both England and America. Everything is
served with brown sauce or white sauce. And how often the white sauce is
like bookbinder's paste, the brown, a bitter, tasteless brown mess!
Strictly speaking, perhaps, the French have but two sauces either,
_espagnole_, or brown sauce, and white sauce, which they call the mother
sauces; but what changes they ring on these mother sauces! The espagnole
once made, with no two meats is it served alike in flavor, and in this
matter of flavor the artist appears. In making brown sauce for any
purpose, bethink yourself of anything there may be in your store-room
with which to vary its flavor, taking care that it shall agree with the
meat for which it is intended. The ordinary cook flies at once to
Worcestershire or Harvey sauce, which are excellent at times, but
"_toujours perdrix_" is not always welcome. A pinch of mushroom powder,
or a few chopped oysters, are excellent with beef or veal; so will be a
spoonful of Montpellier butter stirred in, or curry, not enough to
yellow the sauce, but enough to give a dash of piquancy. A pickled
walnut chopped, or a gherkin or two, go admirably with mutton or pork
chops. In short, this is just where imagination and brains will tell in
cooking, and little essays of invention may be tried with profit. But
beware of trying too much; make yourself perfect in one thing before
venturing on another.
ESPAGNOLE, or brown sauce, is simply a rich stock well flavored with
vegetables and herbs, and thickened with a piece of _roux_ or with brown
flour.
WHITE SAUCE is one of those things we rarely find perfectly made; bad,
it is the _ne plus ultra_ of badness; good, it is delicious. Those who
have tried to have it good, and failed, I beg to try the following
method of making it: Take an ounce and a half of butter and a scant
tablespoonful of flour, mix both with a spoon into a paste; when smooth
add half a pint of warm milk, a _small_ teaspoonful of salt, and the
sixth part of one of _white_ pepper; set it on the fire till it boils,
and is thick enough to mask the back of the spoon transparently; then
add a squeeze of lemon juice, and another ounce and a half of fresh
butter; stir this till quite blended. This sauce is the foundation for
many others, and, for some purposes, the beaten yolk of an egg is
introduced when just off the boil. Capers may be added to it, or chopped
mushrooms, or chopped celery, or oysters, according to the use for which
it is intended. The object of adding the second butter is because
boiling takes away the flavor of butter; by stirring half of it in,
without boiling, you retain it.