Mrs. Welles got everything ready early, put the half head on the dish ready to go into the oven at five o’clock, cut the bacon, and told Molly what the gravy was to be, so that she might make it while she herself went on with mock-turtle soup, which was for next day’s (Sunday) dinner.
“You can have almost any sauce; English sauce piquante is very nice, or brown mushroom sauce.”
“What is English sauce piquante?”
“I call it so, although the old-fashioned name for it is Wow Wow sauce.”
“Let’s try it, if you like it.”
“I do. This is the recipe: Chop fine a dessert-spoonful of capers, the same of parsley, and one large pickled walnut or two small. Put a table-spoonful of flour and one of butter to get brown together in a saucepan; put to them, stirring all the time, half a pint of stock or the broth you have—that in which the head was boiled will do; when it boils, mix a tea-spoonful of dry mustard with a table-spoonful of wine, half one of vinegar, and a tea-spoonful of red currant or cranberry jelly, and one of Worcestershire sauce. Let all simmer till of a creamy thickness, season to taste, and last add the capers and pickles. It is a convenient sauce, because you can vary the flavor as you like, putting pickled cucumber instead of walnut or capers, any other store sauce instead of Worcestershire, and cider in place of wine, and if you have no jelly, a lump of sugar. The characteristic of the sauce is to be a very little sour, a very little sweet, and a little hot, with an agreeable flavor beside.”
The bones that had been taken from the part of the head that was to bake were put back in the pot, the meat was cut from the other half in neat pieces and laid between two dishes to keep it flat, and all the liquor that ran from it, with the rest of the bones, was put back to boil with the liquor till it was reduced to three quarts.
“Now, Molly, as it is impossible to tell how strong or weak dried herbs are, and mock-turtle is a highly flavored soup, I am going to adopt the plan of making essence of the herbs and use just enough.”
So saying, she put into a little saucepan two tea-spoonfuls of chopped parsley, three quarters of one of marjoram, three quarters of one of savory and the same of lemon thyme, and a bay leaf and a half.
“Now I’ll put these to boil, closely covered, in half a pint of water for twenty minutes, then squeeze out as much of the goodness as I can, and add this herb juice to the soup, little by little, till we get the right flavor.”