Talleyrand said England was a country with 24 religions and only one sauce. He might have said two sauces, and he would have been literally right as regards both America and England. Everything is served with brown sauce or white sauce. And how often the white sauce is like bookbinder’s paste, the brown a bitter, tasteless brown mess! Strictly speaking, perhaps, the French have but two sauces either espagnole , or brown sauce, and white sauce, which they call the mother sauces; but what changes they ring on these mother sauces! The espagnole once made, with no two meats is it served alike in flavor, and in this matter of flavor the artist appears. In making brown sauce for any purpose, bethink yourself of anything there may be in your store-room with which to vary its flavor, taking care that it shall agree with the meat for which it is intended.
Espagnole. Or brown sauce, is simply a rich stock well flavored with vegetables and herbs and thickened with a piece of roux or with brown flour.
Beshamel. Or white sauce, is one of those things we rarely find perfectly made; bad it is the “ne plus ultra” of badness; good, it is delicious. Those who have tried to have it good and failed, I beg to try the following method of making it: Take an ounce and a half of butter and a scant tablespoonful of flour, mix both with spoon into a paste; when smooth add half a pint of warm milk, a small teaspoonful of salt, and sixth part of one of white pepper; set it on the fire till it boils, and is thick enough to mask the back of the spoon transparently; then add a squeeze of lemon juice, and another ounce and half of fresh butter; stir this till quite blended.
This sauce is the foundation for many others, and, for some purposes, the beaten yolk of an egg is introduced when just off the boil. Capers may be added to it, chopped mushrooms or chopped celery, or oysters, according to the use for which it is intended. The object of adding the second butter is because boiling takes away the flavor of butter; by stirring half of it in, without boiling, you retain it.
