Currant Sauce (Red).—Put a couple of tablespoonfuls of [red currant jelly]into a small stew-pan, with half a dozen cloves, a small stick of cinnamon, and the rind of an orange. Moisten with a little water, or still better, a little claret, strain it off, and add the juice of the orange.
Currant Sauce (Black).—Proceed exactly as in the above recipe, substituting [black currant jelly] for red.
Curry Sauce.—Take six large onions, peel them, cut them up into small pieces, and fry them in a frying-pan in about two ounces of butter. As soon as the onions begin to change colour, take a small carrot and cut it up into little piece; and a sour apple. When the onions, etc., are fried a nice brown, add about a pint of vegetable [stock] or water and let the whole simmer till the vegetables are quite tender, then add a tea-spoonful of Captain White’s curry paste and a dessertspoonful of curry powder; now rub the whole through a wire sieve, and take care that all the vegetables go through. It is rather troublesome, but will repay you, as good curry sauce cannot be made without. The curry sauce should be sufficiently thick owing to the vegetables being rubbed through the wire sieve. Should therefore the onions be small, less water or stock had better be added. Curry sauce could be thickened with a little [brown roux], but it takes away from the flavour of the curry. A few bay-leaves may be added to the sauce and served up whole in whatever is curried. For instance, if we have a dish of [curried rice], half a dozen or more bay-leaves could be added to the sauce and served up with the rice.
There are many varieties of curry. In India fresh mangoes take the part of our sour apples. Some persons add grated cocoanut to curry, and it is well worth a trial, although on the P. and O. boats the Indian curry-cook mixes the curry fresh every day and uses cocoanut oil for the purpose. In some parts of India it is customary to serve up whole chillies in the curry, but this would be better adapted to a stomach suffering from the effects of brandy-pawnee than to the simple taste of the vegetarian.
Dutch Sauce.—This is very similar to [Allemande Sauce]. Take half a pint of good [butter sauce], make it thoroughly hot, add two yolks of eggs, taking care that they do not curdle, a little pepper and salt, a suspicion of nutmeg, and about a tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar. Some persons instead of using tarragon vinegar add a little lemon juice, say the half of a fresh lemon to this quantity, and half a dozen fresh tarragon leaves, blanched—that is, dipped for a few seconds in boiling water—and then chopped very fine. The tarragon vinegar is much the simplest, as it is very difficult to get fresh tarragon leaves unless one has a good garden or lives near Covent Garden Market.
Dutch Sauce (Green).—Proceed exactly as above and colour the sauce a bright green with a little [spinach extract] (vegetable colouring, sold in bottles by all grocers).
Egg Sauce.—Take half a dozen eggs, put them in a saucepan with sufficient cold water to cover them. Put them on the fire and let them boil for ten minutes after the water boils. Take them out and put them into cold water and let them stand for ten minutes, when the shells can be removed; then cut up the six [hard-boiled eggs] into little pieces, add sufficient [butter sauce] to moisten them, make the whole hot, and serve.
N.B.—Inexperienced cooks often think that hard-boiled eggs are bad when they are not, owing to their often having a tinge of green colour round the outside of the yolk and to their emitting a peculiar smell when the shells are first removed while hot All eggs contain a small quantity of sulphuretted hydrogen.
Fennel Sauce.—Blanch and chop up sufficient fennel to colour half a pint of [butter sauce] a bright green, add a little pepper, salt, and lemon juice, and serve.
German Sweet Sauce.—Take a quarter of a pound of dried cherries, a small saltspoonful of powdered cinnamon, and a few strips of lemon peel, and put them in a small saucepan with about a quarter of a pint of water, or still better, claret, if wine is allowed, and let them simmer on the fire gently for about half an hour; then rub the cherries through a wire sieve with the liquor—(of course, the lemon peel and cloves will not rub through)—and add this to a quarter of a pound of [stewed prunes]. This is a very popular sauce abroad.