Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery: A Manual of Cheap and Wholesome Diet

by A. G. Payne

Artichoke Sauce.—Proceed exactly as if you were making [artichoke soup], only make the purée 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 flavouring 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, flavour with a little pepper and salt, add a small piece of butter, and a little [spinach extract] (vegetable colouring sold in bottles) in order to give it a good colour.

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 persons 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 persons 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.”

We have quoted the recipe of the late M. Francatelli in full, as we believe it is necessary to refer to some very great authority in order to knock out the prejudice from the minds of many who think that they not only can themselves cook, but teach others, but who are bound in the chains of prejudice and tradition which, too often, in the most simple recipes, lead them to follow in the footsteps of their grandmothers.

Real butter sauce can be made as follows, on a small scale:—Take a claret-glass of water, and about a small teaspoonful of flour mixed with rather more than the same quantity of butter, and mix this in the water over the fire till it is of the consistency of very thin gruel. If it is thicker than this, add a little more water. Now take any quantity of butter, and gradually dissolve as much as you can in this thin gruel, adding say half an ounce at a time, till the sauce becomes a rich oily compound. After a time, if you add too much butter, the sauce will curdle and turn oily, as described by Francatelli.

Of course, in everyday life it is not necessary to have the butter sauce so rich, still it is simply ridiculous to thicken a pint of milk, or a pint of water, with a little butter and flour, and then call it butter sauce or melted butter. Suppose we have a large white cabbage, like those met with in the West of England, and we are going to make a meal off it in conjunction with plenty of bread. Suppose the cabbage is sufficiently large for six persons, surely half a pound of butter is not an excessive quantity to use in making butter sauce for the purpose. Yet prejudice is such that if we use half a pound of butter for the butter sauce, housekeepers consider it extravagant. On the other hand, if the butter were placed on the table, and the six persons helped themselves, and ate bread and butter with the cabbage and finished the half-pound, it would not be considered extravagant. Of course, this is simply prejudice.

A simple way of making melted butter is as follows:—Take half a pint of cold water, put it in a saucepan, and add sufficient [white roux], or butter and flour mixed, till it is of the consistency of thin gruel. Now gradually dissolve in this, adding a little piece at a time, as much butter as you can afford; add a suspicion of nutmeg, a little pepper and salt, and a few drops of lemon-juice from a fresh lemon, if you have one in use.

Butter, Melted, or Oiled Butter.—Melted butter, properly speaking, is rarely met with in this country, but is a common everyday sauce on the Continent. It is simply what it says. A piece of butter is placed in a little sauce-boat and placed in the oven till the butter runs to oil, and then sent to table with all kinds of fish with which in our present work we have nothing to do; but it is also sent to table with all kinds of vegetables, such as French artichokes, &c.; sometimes a spoonful of French capers is added to the oiled butter.

Butter, Black, or Beurre Noir.—Take two ounces of butter, and dissolve it in a frying-pan, and let it frizzle till the butter turns a brown colour; then add a tablespoonful of French vinegar, a teaspoonful of chopped capers, a teaspoonful of Harvey’s sauce, and a teaspoonful of mushroom ketchup. Let it remain on the fire till the acidity of the vinegar is removed by evaporation. This is a very delicious sauce, and can be served with Jerusalem artichokes boiled whole, [fried eggs], &c.