The spirit of cookery

Sauce d l'Allemande of 'Dons de Comus' is a blonde de veau flavoured with cheese and vinegar. These data show that while espagnole is the oldest generally accepted name for brown savoury sauce, béchamel Butter Sauce (popularly termed Melted Butter), Sauce Beurrée a I’Auglaise, Sauce Blanche. This sauce, which serves as the basis of many English sauces, requires great care in its preparation, and is very agreeable and useful. Put 4 oz. of butter into a stewpan, add thereto some tincture of nutmeg and pepper, and 4 oz. of sifted flour ; knead the whole well together over the tire, and when it has become somewhat more fluid without increase in colour, moisten with a pint of warm water, or, better, standard broth ; stir the sauce on the fire until it boils, and after having kept it boiling for a few minutes, withdraw it from the fire, and mix with it 1| lb. of fresh butter, added in small pieces with constant stirring. In case the sauce should throw up the butter in an oily form, add a tablespoonful of cold water, and continue stirring. Add salt, then pass the sauce through a tammy into a large saucepan, and keep it in the water-bath. If it is to be acidulous, add the juice of half a lemon, or a little vinegar, just before serving it, but never earlier ; never let it boil, or even stand long, after the acid has been incorporated. When the sauce is incautiously exposed to a high temperature for any length of time, it is apt to become decomposed by the butter collecting on the surface as an oil ; this can be counteracted by the addition of a little cold water in winter, or a small piece of clear ice in summer, and working the sauce briskly with a spoon ; it will then soon assume its original smoothness. As the quantity of butter incorporated in the foregoing sauce will be altogether 30 oz., and as some may object to it on account of its richness, it is necessary to know that became known in wider circles only towards the middle of last century, and vclont6 only towards its end ; for neither ‘ Dons do Conuis ’ nor La Chapelle has the term ‘ veloute.’ DUTCH SAUCE the minimum of butter to be stirred into the first boiled sauce is 8 oz. ; this would yield a sauce with only 12 oz. of butter incorporated. Observe that this is three times the weight of the flour employed. These latter proportions are observed in the preparation of the white sauce of the French kitchen. White, Sauce, or Sauce Blanche, for Four Persons. — Stir in a casserole of the capacity of a litre 30 grm. of butter and 30 grm, of flour over the fire, until the mixture, at first stiff, becomes more liquid ; add tincture of pepper, or pepper and salt, and then 2J decilitres of warm water or standard broth ; stir over the fire until the mixture boils, then withdraw it, and add 60 grm. of butter in small pieces, while constantly stirring. Its consistency ought to be such that it covers the convex back of the spoon with a layer two millimetres in thickness. If it is too thick, it must be diluted with water or broth ; if it is too liquid, it must be thickened, either by boiling before the final butter is stirred in, or by the addition of a new quantity of roux, say one-third of the quantity originally produced.