The girl's own cookery book

Melted butter is the basis of a great many sauces, and it is astonishing what variations may be introduced into it. A little lemon-juice or white wine vinegar may be added to it, or a tablespoonful of cream may be stirred in at the moment of serving. The addition of the yolk of one egg will convert it into sauce blanche — excellent for serving with cauliflower. If two or even three eggs are added with lemon-juice the sauce will be further improved. A dessertspoonful of washed and picked parsley, finely shred and thrown into melted butter, makes it into maitre d'hotel sauce suitable for boiled mutton or new potatoes boiled. Or chopped fennel, blanched and chopped tarragon, picked shrimps, anchovy essence, bruised capers, onion pulp, chopped onion, hard-boiled eggs, or gherkins finely minced, may be stirred in, and the melted The Girl's Own Cookery Book. butter will thus be converted into fennel, tarragon, shrimp, anchovy, caper, onion, egg, or a variety of piquante sauce. The addition of sugar, treacle, wine, or brandy will make it into sauce suitable for puddings. It must always be remembered that egg-yolk, cream, and chopped parsley, should not boil in the sauce, they should be stirred in at the last moment ; also that white onion sauce should be made with milk instead of water. In brown onion sauce the onions are browned before being used. When sauce is to be served with meat or fish, stock made of the trimmings should be substituted for the water. When it is practicable, it is always desirable to use even weak stock instead of water, because it contains more nourishment. Of course, brown stock is taken for brown sauces, and white stock for white sauces. When stock is used, it should be added very gradually. If hot stock were thrown in all at once, the sauce would be lumpy. Skim milk is frequently used instead of white stock in making white sauce, for economy’s sake. For the same reason — economy — dripping is occasionally used instead of butter in making sauce. If anyone feels inclined to look scornful on hearing this, I should like to remark that for every culinary purpose good dripping is to be preferred to bad butter. You may make excellent sauce with pure dripping ; it is not possible to make sauce that will even pass muster with rancid butter. A smaller quantity of dripping than butter should be used however, or the flavour of the sauce will not be good. Excellent fish sauce may be made by adding lemon-juice, parsley, and cream to melted butter. When cream is used, less butter is needed. Brown sauce and white sauce are very favourite preparations, suited for a variety of dishes. Brown sauce may be made as follows : — Peel a shalot, or small onion, scrape half a moderate-sized carrot, remove the dark skin and dark stalk from three mushrooms ; chop all finely; melt an ounce of butter in a saucepan, sprinkle an ounce of flour into it, and beat it to prevent it forming into lumps. Pour in gradually half a pint of brown stock, stirring all the time ; then add the vegetables, a bay leaf, and a sprig of thyme. Draw the pan back, and let the sauce simmer for twenty minutes. Add pepper and salt, Sauces, and How to Make Them. loi and two tablespoonfuls of Harvey’s sauce ; strain and serve. If the vegetables are allowed to “ sweat ” in butter — that is, fry gently without discolouring — they will yield their flavour better.