There are very few cooks who really take the trouble to make sauces properly ; they hurry over them, and therefore often send up to table either a species of paper-hanger's paste or a thin watery fluid. It takes a little time to make sauce properly, and, as on sauces and gravies the perfection of entries depends, even for a simple hash or mince, it is most necessary to make them properly. One often sees butter and flour rolled together in any haphazard fashion, and put into the other ingredients and boiled till thick and never strained through a sieve. It takes them about five minutes and they think it will do. Now, I well know that many excellent cookery- books and good cooks advise the rolling of flour together and then frying. No doubt it can be done so and well. But as, as a rule, cooks hurry over their cooking, it is not always successful. The following way of making sauces is the method I always teach my cook to do, and the result is that the sauce is invariably smooth. All sauces spring from two sauces, brown and white, and it is the different flavourings which make the innumerable sauces of which these two kinds form the basis. The first thing in making a white sauce is to take a table-spoonful of flour and mix it in I20 COOKERY A LA MODE a basin till it is a smooth paste. Whilst doing this, have a small stewpan on the fire with a piece of butter about the size of a large plum in it ; when the butter is melted and very hot, add to it the paste ; give it a stir round, adding a little salt, more milk, and what- ever flavourings are required ; stir over the fire till it begins to thicken, then let it boil till it thickens and the mixture leaves the sides of the saucepan and coats the spoon. If it becomes too thick, add half a gill of cold water and boil up again, then pass through a fine strainer into the tureen or dish it is to be served in. If cooked some time before it is wanted, keep the saucepan in a larger saucepan filled with boiling water, but be sure not to let it boil again. The ' gourmet boilers ' are capital things for keeping food warm and simmering ; they are made in earthenware and put inside a stewpan of hot water, and sauces, &c., may be left in these boilers for hours and they will never boil, and for those persons who do not possess a bain-marie they are a sine qua non. (See Plate XVII.) Brown sauces are made exactly in the same way as white, except that flour is mixed first with cold stock or gravy instead of milk, and added to the boiling butter in the same way. Of course, where oysters, button mushrooms, lobster, shrimps, capers, &c., are used, the sauce must be strained before these are put in, and mushrooms must be cooked first. I have heard cooks grumble and say, ' What a fuss and trouble to make sauce this way ! ' But it is no trouble and only takes two or three minutes longer than the usual rough way of mixing PLATE XVI J. A, Clourmet Boila ; B, Ditto, whilst cooking ; C, Pie-dish ; D, Queen's Pudding-boiler ; E, Chafing-dish ; F, Salamander. SAUCES I 2 I all together ; and certainly the sauce repays the trouble, and unless care and pains are taken in whatever is cooked, success will not be triumphant. I will give some recipes for different sauces, both brown and white, the foundations to be made as I have just directed.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

There are very few cooks who really take the trouble to make sauces properly ; they hurry over them, and therefore often send up to table either a species of paper-hanger's paste or a thin watery fluid. It takes a little time to make sauce properly, and, as on sauces and gravies the perfection of entries depends, even for a simple hash or mince, it is most necessary to make them properly. One often sees butter and flour rolled together in any haphazard fashion, and put into the other ingredients and boiled till thick and never strained through a sieve. It takes them about five minutes and they think it will do. Now, I well know that many excellent cookerybooks and good cooks advise the rolling of flour together and then frying. No doubt it can be done so and well. But as, as a rule, cooks hurry over their cooking, it is not always successful. The following way of making sauces is the method I always teach my cook to do, and the result is that the sauce is invariably smooth. All sauces spring from two sauces, brown and white, and it is the different flavourings which make the innumerable sauces of which these two kinds form the basis. The first thing in making a white sauce is to take a table-spoonful of flour and mix it in a basin till it is a smooth paste. Whilst doing this, have a small stewpan on the fire with a piece of butter about the size of a large plum in it ; when the butter is melted and very hot, add to it the paste ; give it a stir round, adding a little salt, more milk, and whatever flavourings are required ; stir over the fire till it begins to thicken, then let it boil till it thickens and the mixture leaves the sides of the saucepan and coats the spoon. If it becomes too thick, add half a gill of cold water and boil up again, then pass through a fine strainer into the tureen or dish it is to be served in. If cooked some time before it is wanted, keep the saucepan in a larger saucepan filled with boiling water, but be sure not to let it boil again. The ' gourmet boilers ' are capital things for keeping food warm and simmering ; they are made in earthenware and put inside a stewpan of hot water, and sauces, &c., may be left in these boilers for hours and they will never boil, and for those persons who do not possess a bain-marie they are a sine qua non. (See Plate XVII.) Brown sauces are made exactly in the same way as white, except that flour is mixed first with cold stock or gravy instead of milk, and added to the boiling butter in the same way. Of course, where oysters, button mushrooms, lobster, shrimps, capers, &c., are used, the sauce must be strained before these are put in, and mushrooms must be cooked first. I have heard cooks grumble and say, ' What a fuss and trouble to make sauce this way ! ' But it is no trouble and only takes two or three minutes longer than the usual rough way of mixing [illustration: PLATE XVI J. A, Gourmet Boils; B, Ditto, whilst cooking; C, Pie-dish; D, Queen's Pudding-boiler; E, Chafing-dish; F, Salamander.] A, Clourmet Boila ; B, Ditto, whilst cooking ; C, Pie-dish ; D, Queen's Pudding-boiler ; E, Chafing-dish ; F, Salamander. SAUCES I 2 I all together ; and certainly the sauce repays the trouble, and unless care and pains are taken in whatever is cooked, success will not be triumphant. I will give some recipes for different sauces, both brown and white, the foundations to be made as I have just directed.

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