Cookery and housekeeping

When it is desirable to put mustard in a sauce, as in Robert sauce for instance, mustard flour, that is unmade mustard, must always be used. Put a little of the sauce or stock in a cup, stir in the mustard flour, and then work in with the rest of the sauce. * Made mustard ' does not keep, and the true flavour is only obtained by using the flour. Egg sauce for salt fish is improved by some mustard flour being added. * Roux ' for Sauces. Sauces require to be thickened or bound together, and for this purpose either roux, arrowroot, potato flour, or eggs are used. Roux is to be made of a light colour for white sauces and of a dark colour for brown sauces. Put in a saucepan \ lb. butter and let it melt ; stir in four or five spoonsful of flour or of potato starch with a wooden spoon ; let it cool a little, and then mix in your gravy or stock, taking great care that it mixes smoothly. Place it on a distant part of the hot-plate, and let it simmer for one hour ; skim off the grease. Then put the saucepan on the warm part of the hot-plate, that it may ' reduce ' or boil down. Ascertain how much it reduces by letting it drop out of a spoon slowly. The sauce must not be too thick, or too thin, or too dark. Pass through a tamis, and use for mixing with flavour sauces. Let it be borne in mind that flour and water are not made savoury by butter alone, and that flour and water slightly cooked, and with a surface of butter, is not a sauce, but a nauseous substitute for sauce. A bouquet or bunch of fine herbs to give flavour consists of three or four leaves of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a shallot and two bay leaves tied together, so that the bunch of herbs can be taken out after the sauce has received their flavour. * Espagnole,' or Brown Sauce. Put i lb. of butter in a bain-marie, or milk saucepan, and let it melt ; stir in four tablespoonsful of flour which has been dried in the oven. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon till the mixture is a bright chestnut colour. Then add slowly broth enough to make a sauce the consistency of thin cream. Let it simmer for i^ hours, skim, and let it boil up, taking care that it does not stick to the sides or bottom. When the sauce is of the consistency of thick cream, pass it through a tamis, and put it in a jar ready for use. As a skin will form at the top, it is well to add a little bit of butter the last thing. White Sauce. Proceed as above, only keep your flour and butter white by adding a chopped shallot, which keeps it from turning ; and having your broth quite white, finish with some cream, or, if no cream can be had, a glass of white wine into which you have stirred a raw egg. Always warm in a bain-marie. White Sauce for Braising White Meats. Half a pound of fresh beef suet chopped fine, \ lb. of fat bacon, a bunch of fine herbs, an onion and a carrot or two, a little salt, a {&\y peppercorns, and the juice and pulp of a lemon. Stir on a slow fire, or on the gas stove, till the fatty matter is dissolved, taking care that the mixture does not turn brown. Pour in a moderate quantity of water, strain through a hair sieve, and use with flour, smoothly and slowly worked in, for braising calf's head, veal which is to come up white, rabbit, or chicken. To Brown Flour.