Celery, 3 to 5 heads: 20 minutes. Veal broth, or gravy, 1/2 pint; 20 to 40 minutes. Butter, 1-1/2 oz.; flour, 1 dessertspoonful; cream, 1/4 pint, or three yolks of eggs.
WHITE CHESTNUT SAUCE.
Strip the outer rind from six ounces of sound sweet chestnuts, then throw them into boiling water, and let them simmer for two or three minutes, when the second skin will easily peel off. Add to them three quarters of a pint of good cold veal gravy, and a few strips of lemon rind, and let them stew gently for an hour and a quarter. Press them, with the gravy, through a hair-sieve reversed and placed over a deep dish or pan, as they are much more easily rubbed through thus than in the usual way: a wooden spoon should be used in preference to any other for the process. Add a little cayenne and mace, some salt if needed, and about six tablespoonsful of rich cream. Keep the sauce stirred until it boils, and serve it immediately.
Chestnuts without their rinds, 6 oz.; veal gravy, 1 pint; rind of 1/2 lemon: 1-1/4 hour. Salt; spice; cream, 6 tablespoonsful.
Obs.—This sauce may be served with turkey, with fowls, or with stewed veal cutlets.
BROWN CHESTNUT SAUCE.
Substitute rich brown gravy for the veal stock, omit the lemon-rind and cream, heighten the seasonings, and mix the chestnuts with a few spoonsful of Espagnole or highly flavoured gravy, after they have been passed through the sieve.
PARSLEY-GREEN, FOR COLOURING SAUCES.
Gather a quantity of young parsley, strip it from the stalks, wash it very clean, shake it as dry as possible in a cloth, pound it in a mortar, press all the juice closely from it through a hair-sieve reversed, and put it into a clean jar; set it into a pan of boiling water, and in about three minutes, if gently simmered, the juice will be poached sufficiently; lay it then upon a clean sieve to drain, and it will be ready for use.
Spinach-green, for which particular directions will be found at the commencement of Chapter [XXIV]., is prepared in the same manner. The juice of various herbs pounded together may be pressed from them through a sieve and added to cold sauces.