SAUCE-MAKING

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 111, 6 November 1935, Page 13

SAUCE-MAKING

AN EPICURE'S DICTUM

ALMOST A RITE IN FRANCE

"Inspiration, patience, and imagination; you need those three just as much as seasonings and thickenings to make a good sauce," quotes a writer in the Melbourne "Age." A thought discouraging that dictum of an epicure's— French, of course! But one that is worth remembering, for we are inclined to take our sauce-making too lightly. With the French it is something of a rite—as it should be, since the success of a made dish depends so enormously on the sauce that masks or accompanies it. But in English cookery the sauce is most often relegated to a very lowly place in the menu, and while it is a base exaggeration to vow, as the same French epicure did, that the English housewife has only one sauce, and while that is no doubt excellent for pasting snaps in a photograph album, to eat—e'est terrible!" Yet actually it is comparatively easy to prepare a good sauce—provided you understand the first principles of sauce making. And th^y are simple enough. Practically all sauces fall into one of two categories; plain white or brown sauce with a "roux" of flour and butter for thickening, and sauces of the custard type that are thickened by the addition of an egg. THINGS TO REMEMBER. i Up to a point the brown and the white roux are made the same. Usually the fat —always butter for white sauces, while for brown dripping can be used —and the flour should be used in equal proportions, but they vary in proportion to the liquid— milk, stock, or the water in which macaroni, rice, or vegetables has been cooked (this should always be used in sauces in preference to plain water). To make the foundation sauce melt the fat and then add the sifted flour —stirring all the time. Continue stirring for a few minutes till the mixture, from being solid, becomes more liquid, and "honeycombs." For a white sauce, add the liquid immediately, stirring in hot stock (meat or vegetable according to the type of sauce you are making) before adding the cold milk, for hot liquid mixes in quicker and requiresless stirring. The mixture must be beaten and stirred well as the liquid is added. This must be done over the fire, but care must be taken not to let the mixture actually boil until all the liquid has been added. For the sauce will not thicken till it boils, and it must not thicken until all the liquid has been added. FOR A BROWN "ROUX." For a brown roux, the flour and fat mixture must be cooked till it begins to turn brown. It must be stirred all the time, and since the browning takes quite a considerable time, it is a good plan to make a large quantity of brown roux—say, a pound of fat (dripping will do perfectly well), and a pound of flour, browning these and storing in a jar. It will keep for some time, and when a brown sauce; is needed all you have to do is to take j a spoonful of this roux, melt it, and thin it down with stock, and add the required flavouring. i ' Remember that a sauce made with flour must simmer for ten or fifteen minutes after the flour is added, or it will not be properly cooked. Then too many "saucerers" insist that milk for a sauce must always be boiled be-1 fore it is added to avoid all risk of its curdling, and it must be strained into the sauce so that any skin that may have formed on it will not find j its way into the sauce. A too thick sauce can be easily re- I medied by stirring more liquid carefully in, but a too thin sauce is rather more of a problem. Probably the best way of thickening it is by evaporation; that.is, by continuing to cook it until the liquid reduces itself. This will concentrate the flavour in the sauce, and at the same time thicken it. Or, a quicker method, a little flour, corhflour, or arrowroot may be sifted in: one ounce will thicken a pint of liquid.