White Sauce For Fowls

This sauce is a gem from a late 18th-century English manuscript receipt book, bustling with both culinary and medicinal formulations. In a period before mass-produced condiments, home cooks elevated their roasted or boiled poultry with savory, aromatic sauces like this. The inclusion of anchovy, mace, and mushroom showcased the era’s fascination with umami and aromatic complexity, while the use of household scrapings—like the fowl’s own liver—reflected a nose-to-tail thriftiness, rooted in both necessity and gastronomy. The recipe sits among other delights such as blancmange and bride cake, elegantly bridging refined flavor with homey practicality. The sauce would likely have crowned a centerpiece roast, signaling both the cook’s skill and the household’s access to fine (if sometimes humble) ingredients.

Preparation would have involved a heavy iron or copper stewpan or pot for simmering the stock, and a ladle or fine-holed skimmer for removing scum and straining the broth. Mushrooms and liver would have been minced with a large cook’s knife or roughly pounded in a mortar. Straining might be done through folded muslin or a fine hair sieve, while thickening called for a sturdy wooden spoon and, finally, gentle heat over a hearth or open fire.