Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery Part 4

CARROT SAUCE.--Proceed exactly as in carrot soup, using less liquid.

CAULIFLOWER SAUCE.--Proceed exactly as in cauliflower soup, using less liquid.

CELERY SAUCE.--Proceed exactly as in celery soup, only using less liquid.

The thicker this sauce is the better.

CHERRY SAUCE.--Take a quarter of a pound of dried cherries, and put them into a small stew-pan, with a dessertspoonful of black currant jelly, a small stick of cinnamon, with half a dozen cloves, and add rather less than half a pint of water, and let the whole simmer gently for about ten minutes, when you must take out the spices and send the rest to table.

N.B.--If wine is not objected to in cooking, it is a very good plan to add claret instead of water.

CHESTNUT SAUCE.--Proceed as in making chestnut soup, using as little liquid as possible, so as to make the sauce thick.

CINNAMON SAUCE.--The simplest way of making cinnamon sauce is to sweeten some b.u.t.ter sauce with some white sugar, and then add a few drops of essence of cinnamon. The sauce can be coloured pink with a little cochineal. A little wine is an improvement. The sauce can also be made by breaking up and boiling a stick of cinnamon in some water, and then using the water to make some b.u.t.ter sauce.

COCOANUT SAUCE.--Grate the white, part of a cocoanut very finely, and boil it till tender in a very small quant.i.ty of water; add about an equal quant.i.ty of white sugar as there was cocoa-nut; mix in either the yolk of an egg or a tablespoonful of cream. A little lemon juice is an improvement.

CUc.u.mBER SAUCE.--Take two or three small cuc.u.mbers, peel them, slice them, and place them in a dish with a little salt, which has the effect of extracting the water. Now drain the pieces off and strain then in a cloth, to extract as much moisture as possible. Put then in a frying-pan with a little b.u.t.ter; fry them very gently, till they begin to turn colour, then nib them through a wire sieve; moisten the pulp with a little b.u.t.ter sauce; add a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg and vinegar to taste.

CURRANT SAUCE (RED).--Put a couple of tablespoonfuls of red currant jelly into a small stew-pan, with half a dozen cloves, a small stick of cinnamon, and the rind of an orange. Moisten with a little water, or still better, a little claret, strain it off, and add the juice of the orange.

CURRANT SAUCE (BLACK).--Proceed exactly as in the above recipe, subst.i.tuting black currant jelly for red.

CURRY SAUCE.--Take six large onions, peel them, cut them up into small pieces, and fry them in a frying-pan in about two ounces of b.u.t.ter. As soon as the onions begin to change colour, take a small carrot and cut it up into little piece; and a sour apple. When the onions, etc., are fried a nice brown, add about a pint of vegetable stock or water and let the whole simmer till the vegetables are quite tender, then add a tea-spoonful of Captain White's curry paste and a dessertspoonful of curry powder; now rub the whole through a wire sieve, and take care that all the vegetables go through. It is rather troublesome, but will repay you, as good curry sauce cannot be made without. The curry sauce should be sufficiently thick owing to the vegetables being rubbed through the wire sieve. Should therefore the onions be small, less water or stock had better be added. Curry sauce could be thickened with a little brown roux, but it takes away from the flavour of the curry. A few bay-leaves may be added to the sauce and served up whole in whatever is curried. For instance, if we have a dish of curried rice, half a dozen or more bay-leaves could be added to the sauce and served up with the rice.

There are many varieties of curry. In India fresh mangoes take the part of our sour apples. Some persons add grated cocoanut to curry, and it is well worth a trial, although on the P. and O. boats the Indian curry-cook mixes the curry fresh every day and uses cocoanut oil for the purpose. In some parts of India it is customary to serve up whole chillies in the curry, but this would be better adapted to a stomach suffering from the effects of brandy-p.a.w.nee than to the simple taste of the vegetarian.

DUTCH SAUCE.--This is very similar to Allemande Sauce. Take half a pint of good b.u.t.ter sauce, make it thoroughly hot, add two yolks of eggs, taking care that they do not curdle, a little pepper and salt, a suspicion of nutmeg, and about a tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar. Some persons instead of using tarragon vinegar add a little lemon juice, say the half of a fresh lemon to this quant.i.ty, and half a dozen fresh tarragon leaves, blanched--that is, dipped for a few seconds in boiling water--and then chopped very fine. The tarragon vinegar is much the simplest, as it is very difficult to get fresh tarragon leaves unless one has a good garden or lives near Covent Garden Market.

DUTCH SAUCE (GREEN).--Proceed exactly as above and colour the sauce a bright green with a little spinach extract (vegetable colouring, sold in bottles by all grocers).

EGG SAUCE.--Take half a dozen eggs, put them in a saucepan with sufficient cold water to cover them. Put them on the fire and let them boil for ten minutes after the water boils. Take them out and put them into cold water and let them stand for ten minutes, when the sh.e.l.ls can be removed; then cut up the six hard-boiled eggs into little pieces, add sufficient b.u.t.ter sauce to moisten them, make the whole hot, and serve.

N.B.--Inexperienced cooks often think that hard-boiled eggs are bad when they are not, owing to their often having a tinge of green colour round the outside of the yolk and to their emitting a peculiar smell when the sh.e.l.ls are first removed while hot All eggs contain a small quant.i.ty of sulphuretted hydrogen.

FENNEL SAUCE.--Blanch and chop up sufficient fennel to colour half a pint of b.u.t.ter sauce a bright green, add a little pepper, salt, and lemon juice, and serve.

GERMAN SWEET SAUCE.--Take a quarter of a pound of dried cherries, a small saltspoonful of powdered cinnamon, and a few strips of lemon peel, and put them in a small saucepan with about a quarter of a pint of water, or still better, claret, if wine is allowed, and let them simmer on the fire gently for about half an hour; then rub the cherries through a wire sieve with the liquor--(of course, the lemon peel and cloves will not rub through)--and add this to a quarter of a pound of stewed prunes. This is a very popular sauce abroad.

GINGER SAUCE.--The simplest way of making ginger sauce is to sweeten half a pint of b.u.t.ter sauce and then add a few drops of essence of ginger. A richer ginger sauce can be made by taking two or three tablespoonfuls of preserved ginger and two or three tablespoonfuls of the syrup in which they are preserved, rubbing this through a wire sieve, adding about an equal quant.i.ty of b.u.t.ter sauce, making the whole hot in a saucepan.

GOOSEBERRY SAUCE.--Pick and then stew some green gooseberries, just moistening the stewpan with a little water to prevent them burning. Rub the whole through a hair sieve in order to avoid having any pips in the sauce. Sweeten with a little Demerara sugar, as Porto Rico would be too dark in colour. Colour the sauce a bright green with a little spinach extract.

N.B.--It is a mistake to add cream to gooseberry sauce, which is distinct altogether from gooseberry fool. In Germany, vinegar is added to this sauce and it is served with meat.

HORSE-RADISH SAUCE.--Horse-radish sauce is made, properly speaking, by mixing grated horse-radish with cream, vinegar, sugar, made mustard, and a little pepper and salt. A very simple method of making this sauce is to subst.i.tute tinned Swiss milk for the cream and sugar. It is equally nice, more economical, and possesses this great advantage: a few tins of Swiss milk can always be kept in the store cupboard, whereas there is considerable difficulty, especially in all large towns, in obtaining cream without giving twenty-four hours' notice, and the result even then is not always satisfactory. Horse-radish sauce is very delicious, and its thickness should be entirely dependent upon the amount of grated horse-radish. Sticks of horse-radish vary so very much in size that we will say, grate sufficient to fill a teacup, throw this into a sauce tureen, mix a dessertspoonful of Swiss milk with a tablespoonful of vinegar and about two tablespoonfuls of milk and a teaspoonful of made mustard, add this to the horse-radish, and, if necessary, sufficient milk to make the whole of the consistency of bread sauce. As the sauce is very hot, as a rule it is best not to add any pepper, which can be easily added afterwards by those who like it.

INDIAN PICKLE SAUCE.--Chop up two or three tablespoonfuls of Indian pickles, place them in a frying-pan with a quarter of a pint of water, and if the pickles are sour as well as hot, let them simmer some little time so as to get rid of the vinegar by evaporation. Then thicken the whole with some brown roux till the sauce is as thick as pea soup. The vinegar should be got rid of as much as possible. This is a very appetising dish with boiled rice and Parmesan cheese.

ITALIAN SAUCE.--This is an old-fas.h.i.+oned recipe taken from a book written in French, and published more than fifty years ago. Put into a saucepan a little parsley, a shallot, some mushrooms and truffles, chopped very finely, with a piece of b.u.t.ter about the size of a walnut. Let all boil gently for half an hour, add a spoonful of oil, and serve.

MAITRE D'HOTEL SAUCE.--Maitre d'hotel sauce is simply a lump of b.u.t.ter mixed with some chopped parsley, a little pepper and salt, and lemon juice.

Hot sauce is often called Maitre d'hotel when chopped blanched parsley and lemon juice is added to a little white sauce.

MANGO CHUTNEY SAUCE.--Take a couple of tablespoonfuls of Mango Chutney, moisten it with two or three tablespoonfuls of b.u.t.ter sauce, rub the whole through a wire sieve, and serve either hot or cold. Or the chutney can be simply chopped up fine and added to the b.u.t.ter sauce without rubbing through the wire sieve.

MAYONNAISE SAUCE.--This is the most delicious of all cold sauces. It is composed entirely of raw yolk of egg and oil, flavoured with a dash of vinegar. When made properly it should be of the consistency of b.u.t.ter in summer time. Many women cooks labour under the delusion that it requires the addition of cream. Mayonnaise sauce is made as follows:--Break an egg and separate the yolk from the white, and place the yolk at the bottom of a large basin. Next take a bottle of oil, which must be cool but bright; if the oil is cloudy, as it often is in cold weather, you cannot make the sauce. Nor can you if the oil has been kept in a warm place. Now proceed to let the oil drop, drop by drop, on the yolk of egg, and with a silver fork, or still better, a wooden one, beat the yolk of egg and oil quickly together. Continue to drop the oil, taking care that only a few drops drop at a time, especially at starting, and continue to beat the mixture lightly and quickly. Gradually the yolk of egg and oil will begin to get thick, first of all like custard. When this is the case a little more oil may be added at a time, but never more than a teaspoonful. As more oil is added, and the beating continues, the sauce gets thicker and thicker, till it is nearly as thick as b.u.t.ter in summer time. When it arrives at this stage no more oil should be added. A little tarragon vinegar may be added at the finish, or a little lemon juice. This makes the sauce whiter in colour.

One yolk of egg will take a teacupful of oil. It is best to add pepper and salt when the salad is mixed. Mayonnaise sauce is by far the best sauce for lettuce salad. It will keep a day, but should be kept in a cool place, and the basin should be covered over with a moist cloth.

MAYONNAISE SAUCE, GREEN.--Make some mayonnaise sauce as above, and colour it with some spinach colouring (vegetable colouring, sold in bottles by all grocers).

MINT SAUCE.--Take plenty of fresh mint leaves, as the secret of good mint sauce is to have plenty of mint. Chop up sufficient mint to fill a teacup, put this at the bottom of a sauce tureen, pour sufficient boiling water on the mint to thoroughly moisten it, and add a tablespoonful of brown sugar, which dissolves best when the water is hot. Press the mint with a tablespoon to extract the flavour, let it stand till it is quite cold, and then add three or four tablespoonfuls of malt vinegar, stir it up, and the sauce is ready. The quant.i.ty of vinegar added is purely a matter of taste, but a teaspoonful of chopped mint floating in half a pint of vinegar is no more mint sauce than dipping a mutton chop in a quart of boiling water would be soup in ordinary cookery.

MUSHROOM SAUCE, WHITE.--Mushroom sauce can be made from fresh mushrooms or tinned mushrooms. When made from fresh they must be small b.u.t.ton mushrooms, and not those that are black underneath. They must be peeled, cut small, and have a little lemon juice squeezed over them to prevent them turning colour, or they had still better be thrown into lemon juice and water. They must now be fried in a frying-pan with a small quant.i.ty of b.u.t.ter till they are tender, and then added to a little thickened milk, or still better, cream. When made from tinned mushrooms, simply chop up the mushrooms, reserving the liquor, then add a little cream and thicken with a little white roux. A little pepper and salt should be added in both cases.

Instead of using either milk or cream, you can use a small quant.i.ty of sauce Allemande.

MUSHROOM SAUCE, BROWN.--Proceed exactly as above with regard to the mushrooms, both fresh and tinned, only instead of adding milk, cream, or Allemande sauce, add a little stock or water, and then thicken the sauce with a little brown roux.

MUSHROOM SAUCE, PUREE.--Mushroom sauce, both white and brown, is sometimes served as a puree. It is simply either of the above sauces rubbed through a wire sieve.