The spirit of cookery

For the production of these sauces, the English as well as the French variation, both the butter and flour must be of the best quality. If the rules given above be carefully observed, the preparation of melted butter will always be successful, and melted butter will triumph over the disrepute into which bad cooks, by their water-gruel products, have brought it. Dutch Sauce, Sauce Hollandaise. Dutch sauce is another example of the manner in which the most, skilful inventions are spoiled by incompetent executants. The principle of its composition is that it shall not contain any other ingredient besides yolk of egg and butter, and yet many recipes of even accomplished cooks prescribe the addition of at least white sauce or velouté, or of flour or starch. These latter sauces containing farinaceous additions should be termed compound, and placed in the position of derivates. Dutch sauce then maintains its character as an original or fundamental sauce, and its position as the best of pale-coloured sauces. As melted butter, or English blotter sauce, is an emulsion of butter with a watery solution of dextrine produced by heating a mixture of butter and flour, so Dutch sauce is an emulsion of butter with (a watery solution of) yolk of egg. It is, therefore, not a savoury sauce, but perfectly bland, deriving a slight acidulous taste from a little vinegar, with the introduction of which its preparation begins. Mode of preparing Dutch Sauce for Four Persons. — Put into a saucepan of the capacity of a litre 2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar, 5 grm, of salt, and 3 grm, of white pepper, or its equivalent in the form of tincture ; boil this down to a dessertspoonful, withdraw the casserole from the fire, add 2 tablespoonfuls of cold water and 2 yolks free from white and capsule-strings ; place again on the fire, and keep stirring the mixture ; as soon as the yolks begin to set, remove the pan from the fire, add 20 grm, of butter, and stir until they be fused. Place again on the fire, and add a second 20 grm, of butter ; in this way you proceed until you have incorporated with the original yolks six times 20 grm,, i.e., 120 grm, in all, of butter. Never add a new quantity of butter before the amount previously added is fused and emulged. After the introduction of the third portion of butter, put a tablespoonful of water into the pan in order to prevent the curdling or turning of the sauce. When all butter has been introduced, put another tablespoonful of water to the sauce, in order that it may not be too stiff; if, notwithstanding this addition, it should adhere to the back of the spoon in a layer of more than three lines in thickness, then add another tablespoonful of cold water. Salt and spice the sauce. CLASSIFICATION OF SAUCES ^45 As regards the preliminary reduction, by boiling of the two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, we believe this to have the effect only of extracting the pepper ; upon this hypothesis it would be sufficient to begin the operation with a dessertspoonful of vinegar, the tincture of 3 grm. of pepper, and 5 grm. of salt, and omit the reduction by boiling.