ir grandmothers.

Real butter sauce can be made as follows, on a small scale:--Take a
claret-glass of water, and about a small teaspoonful of flour mixed with
rather more than the same quantity of butter, and mix this in the water
over the fire till it is of the consistency of very thin gruel. If it is
thicker than this, add a little more water. Now take any quantity of
butter, and gradually dissolve as much as you can in this thin gruel,
adding say half an ounce at a time, till the sauce becomes a rich oily
compound. After a time, if you add too much butter, the sauce will curdle
and turn oily, as described by Francatelli.

Of course, in everyday life it is not necessary to have the butter sauce so
rich, still it is simply ridiculous to thicken a pint of milk, or a pint of
water, with a little butter and flour, and then call it butter sauce or
melted butter. Suppose we have a large white cabbage, like those met with
in the West of England, and we are going to make a meal off it in
conjunction with plenty of bread. Suppose the cabbage is sufficiently
large for six persons, surely half a pound of butter is not an excessive
quantity to use in making butter sauce for the purpose. Yet prejudice is
such that if we use half a pound of butter for the butter sauce,
housekeepers consider it extravagant. On the other hand, if the butter
were placed on the table, and the six persons helped themselves, and ate
bread and butter with the cabbage and finished the half-pound, it would not
be considered extravagant. Of course, this is simply prejudice.

A simple way of making melted butter is as follows:--Take half a pint of
cold water, put it in a saucepan, and add sufficient white roux, or butter
and flour mixed, till it is of the consistency of thin gruel. Now
gradually dissolve in this, adding a little piece at a time, as much butter
as you can afford; add a suspicion of nutmeg, a little pepper and salt, and
a few drops of lemon-juice from a fresh lemon, if you have one in use.


BUTTER, MELT