Some very good cooks use brandy in making sauces, particularly for ragouts; sugar also.
White Roux.
Melt slowly 1 lb. of good butter in a little water, then stir in 1 lb. of fine, well dried flour; stir till as thick as paste, then simmer it a quarter of an hour, stirring all the time, or it will burn. It will keep two or three days. The common mode of browning soup and gravy with burnt sugar is not so good as brown flour, but the browning is prepared thus: put ¼ lb. of fresh butter with ½ lb. of lump sugar into a saucepan, shake it often, and when of a clear brown bottle it for use.
To Brown Flour.
Spread flour on a plate, set it in the oven, or before the fire, and turn often, that it may brown equally, and any shade you like. Put it by in a jar for use.
Brown Roux.
Melt butter very slowly, and stir in browned flour; it will not require so long as to cook white roux, because the flour has been browned. Will keep two or three days. When you use either of these Roux, mix the quantity you wish (a table-spoonful for a tureen of soup), with a little of the soup or gravy quite smooth, then use it.
The basis of most English sauces is melted butter, yet English cooks do not excel in making it, and the general fault is deficiency of butter.
To Melt Butter, the French Sauce Blanche.
Break ¼ lb. of good butter in small pieces, into a saucepan, with 3 table-spoonsful of sweet cream, or milk, milk and water, or water alone; dredge fine dried flour over, hold the saucepan over the fire, toss it quickly round (always one way) while the butter melts, and becomes as thick as very thick cream; let it just boil, turn the saucepan quickly, and it is done.
Butter for oysters, shrimps, lobsters, eggs, or any thick-
