Chop four shallots fine, put them into a saucepan with half a gill of Tarragon vinegar and half a gill of plain vinegar; boil till reduced to one tablespoonful; then add one gill of white sauce, mixing well. Stand the saucepan in another of boiling water; then add, one at a time, three yolks of eggs, beating each, one well in before adding another, and on no account let the sauce boil. Remove the saucepan from the fire when the eggs are all in and show signs of thickening. Have ready three ounces of butter cut into small pieces; drop one in at a time, and with an egg-whisk beat the sauce till the butter is blended; then add another piece, and so on, till all the butter is used. If added too quickly the butter will oil, therefore great care must be taken to see one piece entirely blend before adding another. The butter will probably salt the sauce enough, but if not, add a very little salt. This sauce should have the appearance of a Welsh-rabbit when ready to spread; in other words, it should be very thick, smooth, and dark yellow.
Soubise.—This sauce, which transforms ordinary mutton-chops into “côtelettes à la Soubise,” is very easily made. Boil half a dozen Bermuda onions (medium size) in milk till quite tender; press out all the milk; chop them as fine as possible; sprinkle a quarter of a saltspoonful of white pepper and one of salt over them; then stir them with a tablespoonful of butter into half a pint of white sauce. If the onions should thin the sauce too much (they are sometimes very watery), thicken with a yolk of egg, or blend a teaspoonful of flour with the butter before stirring it in. Boil the sauce three minutes. Needless to say, if the yolk of egg is added, it must be beaten in after the sauce is removed from the stove, and only allowed to thicken, not boil.
The sauces so far given are what French cooks call “grand sauces.” They are the most important part of the dish with which they are served, and, as we have seen, give the name to it. There are numberless other sauces of which the white sauce is parent that are, however, not indispensable to the dish they are served with—by which I mean a boiled fish may be served with oyster sauce or Dutch sauce, the sauce being in this case simply the adjunct.
A dessertspoonful of capers put into half a pint of white sauce, with a teaspoonful of the vinegar, makes caper sauce.
Celery sauce is, again, white sauce with the pulp of boiled celery. Boil the white part of four heads of celery (sliced thin) in milk till it will mash; this will take an hour, perhaps more; then rub the pulp through a coarse sieve, and stir it into half a pint of white sauce made with half rich cream.
Oyster sauce is white sauce made by using the oyster liquor instead of stock. The oysters should be bearded, just allowed to plump in the liquor, which must then be strained for the sauce, using a gill of it with a gill of thick cream to make half a pint; for this quantity a dozen and a half of small oysters will be required.
Shrimp sauce, parsley sauce, lobster sauce, cucumber sauce, and all the family are white sauce with the addition of the ingredient naming it. Cucumber sauce, which is approved for fish, is made by grating a cucumber, and adding it, with the water from it, to some white sauce; boil till well flavored, and then strain. If too thin, boil till thick, stirring carefully.
For shrimp sauce canned shrimps serve very well indeed; they must be thrown for a minute into cold water, well stirred in it to remove superfluous salt, then drained, and dried on a cloth. Put a gill of shrimps to half a pint of béchamel made with fish stock, boil once, and stir in just enough essence of anchovy to make the sauce a pale shrimp pink.
Cardinal sauce is a handsome sauce for boiled fish. It is made by drying the coral from a lobster, then pounding it quite smooth, with one ounce of butter, until it is a perfectly smooth paste. Stir this into half a pint of béchamel. It should be a fine red when mixed; pass through a sieve, and add as much cayenne as will go on the end of the blade of a small penknife.
Hollandaise or Dutch sauce is best made in the following way. There are other methods, but this one meets general approval, is not difficult, and agrees with many who cannot possibly eat it when oil is used.