Sauce For Boiled Or Baked Fish

4 ounces butter.

1 tablespoonful flour.

2 anchovies.

1 teaspoonful chopped capers, or nasturtium seed, or green pickle. 1 shallot.

Pepper and salt to taste. 1 tablespoonful vinegar. 1 teacupful hot water.

Put the water into the inner saucepan, chop the anchors and shallot, and put in with the pepper and salt. Boil two minutes, and strain back into the saucepan when you have rinsed with hot water. Now add the flour wet smooth with cold water, and stir until it thickens; put in the butter by degrees, and when it is thoroughly melted and mixed, the vinegar; lastly, the capers and a little nutmeg.

White Sauce for Fish+

Make drawn butter by receipt No. 2, but with double the quantity of flour, and use, instead of water, the liquor in which the fish was boiled. Add four tablespoonfuls of milk, in which a shallot and a head of celery or a pinch of celery-seed has Been boiled, then strained out. Boil one minute, and stir in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley.

Oyster Sauce+

1 pint oysters. Half a lemon.

2 tablespoonfuls butter.

1 tablespoonful flour.

1 teacupful milk or cream.

Cayenne and nutmeg to taste.

Stew the oysters in their own liquor five minutes, and add the milk. When this boils, strain the liquor and return to the saucepan. Thicken with the flour when you have wet it with cold water; stir it well in; put in the butter, next the cayenne (if you like it), boil one minute; squeeze in the lemon-juice, shake it around well, and pour out.

Or,

Drain the oysters dry without cooking at all; make the sauce with the liquor and other ingredients just named. Chop the raw oysters, and stir in when you do the butter; boil five minutes, and pour into the tureen. Some put in the oysters whole, considering that the sauce is handsomer than when they are chopped.

Oyster sauce is used for boiled halibut, cod, and other fish, for boiled turkey, chickens and white meats generally.

Crab Sauce

1 crab, boiled and cold. 4 tablespoonfuls of milk. 1 teacupful drawn butter. Cayenne, mace, and salt to taste.

Make the drawn butter as usual, and stir in the milk. Pick the meat from the crab, chop very fine, season with cayenne, mace, and salt to taste; stir into the drawn butter. Simmer three minutes, but do not boil.

Lobster sauce is very nice made as above, with the addition of a teaspoonful of made mustard and the juice of half a lemon. This is a good fish sauce.

Anchovy Sauce

6 anchovies.

A teacupful drawn butter.

A wine-glass pale Sherry.

Soak the anchovies in cold water two hours ; pull them to pieces, and simmer in just enough water to cover them for half an hour. Strain the liquor into the drawn butter (No. 3), boil a minute, add the wine; heat gradually to a boil, and stew five minutes longer. You may substitute two teaspoonfuls of anchovy paste for the little fish themselves.

Serve with boiled fish.