Brown Sauces

Melt two ounces of butter and two ounces of flour in a copper saucepan and stir over the fire until a pale bright brown.

Add a pint of stock, the fried vegetables and a gill of tomato sauce.

Let it gently simmer for half an hour with the cover off.

Strain through a fine sieve.

Wash, peel and cut small the mushrooms, carrot, onion and shallot, dry them, and fry them a fine brown in a tablespoonful of butter without burning.

Drain off the butter.

For Chateaubriand, add a wineglass of sherry reduced to half a glass by boiling, a dessertspoonful of finely chopped parsley and the juice of half a small lemon to one third the quantity of Spanish sauce.

Stir in one ounce of butter gradually, bit by bit, letting each piece blend before adding more.

For Piquante sauce, stew a finely chopped shallot with a tablespoonful of vinegar until the vinegar is entirely absorbed, without burning.

Add half a pint of Spanish sauce and a gill of stock with a bay-leaf and a sprig of thyme, and cook very gently ten minutes.

Remove the thyme and bay-leaf, add a dessertspoonful of chopped pickled cucumber, a teaspoonful of capers and a dessertspoonful of finely chopped parsley.

Simmer very slowly ten minutes more, adding cayenne to lay on the tip of a penknife blade.

For Poivrade, fry an onion and a small carrot cut fine, a sliced tomato and an ounce of lean ham in two ounces of butter until slightly browned.

Add half a pint of claret, a bouquet of herbs, two cloves and six peppercorns, and simmer until the wine is reduced one half.

Add half a pint of good Spanish sauce, boil gently ten minutes, strain, and serve very hot.

For Bordelaise sauce, scald a tablespoonful of chopped shallots and put them to half a pint of Chablis or Sauterne, reducing the wine to one gill.

Mix with half a pint of Spanish sauce and a sixth of a saltspoonful of pepper, then strain and serve.

For Robert sauce, chop three medium-sized onions fine and fry them in a tablespoonful of butter until a clear yellowish-brown, stirring constantly.

Drain the onions and put them to a half-pint of Spanish sauce with a wineglass of stock, then simmer gently twenty minutes.

Add a pinch of pepper and strain.

Mix a teaspoonful of vinegar in a cup with a teaspoonful of mustard and stir this into the sauce.

For Sauce a la Normande, add to half a pint of Spanish sauce a dozen mushrooms sliced in half, shellfish, a tablespoonful of picked shrimps, a tablespoonful of essence of anchovy and a dust of cayenne pepper.

For Downton sauce, add a dessertspoonful of anchovy essence and a small wineglass of sherry to three quarters of a pint of bechamel and mix well.

For Orange sauce, boil half a pint of Spanish sauce five minutes to thicken it, then add the juice of three sweet oranges and the thinly pared peel of one.

Boil the peel half an hour in water, shred it into fine strips, then stew the strips another half-hour in a gill of stock with a scant teaspoonful of sugar.

Add the shredded peel to the sauce with half a saltspoonful of salt and boil five minutes.

For Matelote, simmer half a pint of Sauterne or Chablis, half a pint of rich stock, two bay-leaves, three leaves of tarragon, chervil, chive, a scant saltspoonful of salt and a quarter of a saltspoonful of pepper until reduced to one half-pint.