The Canon of Classic Gulf Coast Creole cuisine was defined for the most part by three works published between the years 1885 and 1900—La Cuisine Creole, The Creole Cookery Book, and the Times Picayune Cookbook. Yet an enormous number of important recipes were published during those same 15 years in other sources—recipes that increase the body of attested Creole Dishes by nearly 100 percent over those contained the in the trinity of founding texts. I will spend this issue of Foodlore and More (the next six sessions) reprinting many of these neglected recipes. Today, we will survey the sauces that distinguished Creole kitchen craft.
Sauces
Bechamel Sauce (St. Charles Hotel) – Put three tablespoonfuls of butter in a sauce-pan; add three tablespoonfuls of sifted flour, quarter of a teaspoonful of nutmeg, ten pepper-corns, a teaspoonful of salt; beat all well together; then add to this, three slices of onion, two slice of carrot, two sprigs of parsley, two of thyme, a bay leaf and half a dozen mushrooms cut up. Moisten the whole with a pint of stock or water and a cup of sweet cream. Set it on the stove and cook slowly for half of an hour, watching closely that it does not burn; then strain through a sieve. Most excellent with roast veal, meats and fish. [The White House Cook Book, 141]
White Sauce – ¼ pound of butter, ½ tablespoonful of vinegar, 1 tablespoonful of flour, ½ gill of water, A very little nutmet. Salt to taste. Mix flour and water to a smooth paste. Put all in a sauce-pan; do not let it boil, but simmer until it thickens. [Mrs. V. E. James, New Orleans, The Journal of Agriculture Cook Book (St. Louis, 1894), 114.]
Beurre de Ecrevisses (Crabs or Shrimps) — Wash and cook the fish with salt and water; pound the shells (which should be bright pink or red in color) and the flesh together in a mortar; when you have reduced them to a smooth paste, mix them with an equal quantity of the finest fresh butter; work smooth in the mortar, then put on the fire with a little water, and boil for half an hour; put some clear cold water in the bottom of a jar or pan, spread over a coarse muslin, and pour on the butter ; it will filter through the muslin, and must be pressed through if necessary; it will float on the water below, from which you must skim it, working it again into shape, and using it for flavoring sauces, etc. [Unrivalled Cook Book-390-91]
To Prepare French Mustard — Pound a quart of black mustard seed; mix with it equal parts of chopped parsley, chervil, celery, tarragon, garlic, allspice, and cloves, six pounded anchovies, and salt to taste; make this into a liquid paste, and let it stand three or four days; then strain it, and put it in little earthen jars; heat a little iron rod red-hot, and plunge it into each jar, and let it remain until it becomes cold; this is necessary to remove the bitterness and dampness of the mustard; fill in this hole with vinegar; cork and seal up your jars. [Unrivalled Cook Book, 444]
Fifine’s sauce huile d’ olive – Fifine used the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, a handful each of tarragon, garden-cress, chives and parsley; these she pounds to a paste, and then rubs through a wire sieve; now she uses the olive oil with lavish hand, and adds lemon juie from time to time and by the few drops, turning the wooden spoon always in the same direction; and now a sprinkling of pepper, a pinch of salt and a little anisette or parfait amour. Emma S. McLagan, “Two Creole Sauces,” St. Louis Republic (March 20, 1892).
Remoulade – the French name of a favorite kind of salad dressing that is made with cooked yolks in part, has garlic, shalots and parsley added. It is different from mayonaise which is made with raw yolks. Looks like sauce tartare, which is minced pickles and shalots (young onions) in mayonaise. Take: 3 hard boiled yolks.1 raw yolk. 1/4 cup olive oil. Same of melted fresh butter. 1/2 cup vinegar. 1 teaspoon salt, pinch of cayenne. 1 teaspoon made mustard. 2 or 3 cloves of garlic crushed and minced, and 2 tablespoons finely minced green onions. Pound the hard-boiled yolks in a bowl with the butter; add salt, mustard pepper; then the raw yolk, or two of them, and stir in the oil gradually and alternately with the vinegar. It makes a buttery compound that is a most excellent salad dressing without the garlic and onion, but add those to make the sauce remoulade. [Whitehead, Cooking for Profit, 121]
Roux – If you mix equal quantities of flour and butter or oil together and stir it in a pan over a fire, as soon as it has bubbled up and the flour has the cooked taste, you have white roux for thickening white sauces and white soups. If you let it remain longer over the fire it becomes brown and acquires a different and. if not scorched, a richer flavor, and then it is brown roux, and thickens brown soups and sauces. So, when the Creole cook stirs flour into the contents of his saucepan, he makes a brown roux, and immediately after pours in a gallon or more of soup stock, which he calls bouillon, and adds a quart or perhaps two quarts of tomatoes, two bay leaves, a few cloves, some salt and whole pepper and allows it to boil at the side for an hour or longer and then strains it off and sets it away to get cold. [Hotel Meat Cookery]
Sauce Creole – Peel three or four tomatoes, and cut them up. in small pieces, cut up a large onion the same way, slashing it across and across with the knife, while the onion is held in the fingers, and crush" w ith the side of the knife three or four cloves of garlic. Pour a little oil in a broad saucepan, put in onion and garlic and fry light brown, then add the cut tomatoes, and stir the mixture over the fire until the tomato juice has dried out, and the sauce is thick enough to be taken up on a knife's point. Season with salt and pepper while cooking. [Hotel Meat Cookery]
Sauce Espagnole (Brown Sauce) — Batter the bottom of the saucepan; put in pieces of cold chicken, game, ham, veal, etc., in fact whatever cold meats you have ; add an onion, a clove, and a carrot cut in pieces; place the sauce-pan, covered, on a slow fire to let the meat steam, and until the sauce begins to color; add one or two spoonfuls of flour, mix it well, moisten with hot bouillon so that the sauce will be the proper consistency; add a soup bunch, and salt; let it simmer slowly four hours on the back of the stove ; then skim off the grease; press it through a sieve, and keep it on hand for adding to other sauces. [Unrivalled Cook Book-388]
Lemon Sauce – Boil some soup stock with a few slices of lemon, a very little sugar, and a very little grated nutmeg. Add to this some chopped parsley, a few nasturtiums,and a very small taste of pepper. Thicken with a little flour or the yelks of eggs. This is nice with stewed poultry. [Mrs. V. E. James, New Orleans, The Journal of Agriculture Cook Book (St. Louis, 1894), 115.]
Maitre d’hotel Sauce – Chop a tablespoonful of parsley until it is a powder, then add a little chives; mix them thoroughly with a big lump of butter, a teaspoonful of lemon juice, a very little grated nutmeg, some salt and freshly ground pepper; this sauce is spread on a 2 inch beefsteak, and turn it over and about twice or thrice. Serve with the least possible delay. Emma S. McLagan, “Two Creole Sauces,” St. Louis Republic (March 20, 1892).
Spanish Sauce for Fried Fish — Pound a clove of garlic and two red-pepper pods which you have softened in hot water; thin it with a little water, pour it in a saucepan with some hot olive-oil, vinegar, and salt; fry your fish in this sauce. [Unrivalled Cook Book-79]
Oyster Sauce — One pint of oysters; half a lemon, juice only; two tablespoonfuls of butter; one teaspoonful of flour, mixed with cold water; one teacupful of milk or cream; cayenne and nutmeg to taste. Stew the oysters in their own liquor five minutes, and add the cream; when this boils, strain the liquor and return to the saucepan ; thicken with the flour, stir well, then add the butter and salt, and season to taste ; boil one minute, add the lemon juice, stir well, and dish. [Unrivalled Cook Book-387]
Sauce Piquante – A sauce piquante that is delicious with any kind of boiled fish or meat, is easily made by taking a tablespoonful each of pickled gherkins—or almost any kind of green pickles—capers and onions, and chop very fine; put into a small saucepan with a half teacup of vinegar; still until the vinegar boils away. Then add a tablespoonful each of butter and flour, a teaspoon of salt and a very little cayenne, and pour over all a teacup or half pint of boiling water. When it comes to a boil, pour over the meat or fish, and it adds greatly to the flavor. Irene H., St. Louis Republic (July 27, 1890).
Sauce Ravigote — Put into a saucepan two or three teaspoonfuls of chopped shallots, and six tablespoonfuls of vinegar ; cook until the liquid is reduced to one half ; then add six tablespoonfuls of white sauce, rather thick ; let all boil for a few seconds ; then withdraw the saucepan from the fire, and mix with the sauce, drop by drop, the quarter of a tumblerful of oil of Lucca [olive oil], stirring steadily one way ; when smooth add a teaspoonful of made mustard, and a pinch each of tarragon and pimpernel chopped fine. [UCB-394]
Shrimp Sauce — Take half a pint of boiled shrimps, pick out the meat from the tails, pound the rest in a mortar with the juice of half a lemon and a piece of butter, and pass it through a sieve; make a pint of melted butter, put the meat from the tails into it, add a dust of cayenne, and when the sauce boils stir into it the shrimp butter which has come through the sieve, with a table-spoonful of cream. Crab and lobster sauce can be made in the same way. [Unrivalled Cook Book-396]
Sauce Tomato – Pour into a saucepan enough oil to moisten the bottom, lay in some pieces of raw ham, and a large onion or two chopped, and fry light brown, then put in a half gallon can of tomatoes or raw tomatoes equivalent, a head of garlic, few- cloves, salt and pepper. Motives of economy may dictate the use of roux to thicken up the full quantity of tomato juice, but if let alone the Creole cook will not make use of that or any other kind of thickening, but will boil down the sauce, and condense the whole amount of tomatoes and seasoning into a small quantity, rub it through a strainer and keep it ready for use in like manner with the Espagnole and Sauce Creole. {Hotel Meat Cookery]