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Saucy surprise
 I was browsing through an old cookbook this morning - Lady Maclean's Book of Sauces and Surprises. The book failed to survive a purge at Wellington Library about 10 years ago and I picked it up, along with a few others, for a mere dollar. It emerged from a carton after a recent shift. Time to read it. The title intrigued me. I like surprises. The book starts with the basics and covers the traditional stocks, before detouring through the busy cooks' cheats using tinned soups, bouillon cubes, tinned clam juice and the like. A mild surprise, perhaps. The usual suspects are there, too. The classic French sauces, the emulsion sauces, traditional English and American sauces. Admiral Ross's Indian Devil Mixture attracted my attention but it was a fairly tame mix of cold gravy, ketchup, English mustard, butter, curry paste, vinegar and salt mixed smoothly on a soup plate then used as the stewing medium for some cold meat. Victorian Cockle Sauce sounded a little exhausting with 100 cockles to diligently clean before cooking was even considered. A Good Sauce for Prawn Cocktails (this book was first published in 1978) was a more refined version of the ubiquitous mayo/tomato sauce/lemon juice concoction that did the dinner party rounds of the time.  Goodness knows what President Jimmy Carter did with his special sauce: "Puree 4 or 5 bananas with about 75g/3 oz peanut butter. Pass through a fine sieve and mix with mayonnaise" but Veronica Maclean's verdict was, "Not as strange as it sounds. In fact a new and interesting flavour."There are some store cupboard sauces for thrifty cooks to make for themselves instead of buying the commercial versions. These include Worcestershire Sauce, Harvey's Sauce and the scary-sounding Government Sauce which was flagged as "the universal tomato ketchup at its best: it comes from Washington DC". I wonder if President Obama has latched onto that? Elizabeth Arden's Special Dressing didn't contain any face cream but it did have Worcestershire Sauce, tarragon vinegar, onion, oil, egg yolks, horseradish, parsley, watercress, Veg-e-sal ("vital to the recipe") and a teaspoon of monosodium glutamate. She must have liked it - it made three cups of the stuff. I was nearing the end of the book and still no great surprises. In fact, some of the 600 recipes sounded worth trying. Then among the cold sauces "from all over" I spotted one from Australia, specifically from Melbourne. "This sounds peculiar but tastes good with a cold chicken or a cold duck salad." And the recipe "Simply fold about 75g/3 oz sieved marmalade into the mayonnaise." Well, well, well. I've looked in various older Australian cookbooks for this "Marmalade Mayonnaise" without success. Was it really a Melbourne specialty? No word in Stephanie Alexander's magnum opus The Cook's Companion. Google couldn't throw any light on the subject. 1001 Foods You Must Eat Before You Die didn't mention it. I trawled through my sauce books and cooking textbooks. Naught. I was beginning to think some Aussie joker must have pulled Lady M's leg. Then I came upon Ambrose Heath's 1948 work, The Book of Sauces. There it was - another recipe for Marmalade Mayonnaise Sauce, though used slightly differently. "To a teacupful of mayonnaise sauce add two tablespoonfuls of orange marmalade and serve with fruit salad." And the origin? "American." This sounds peculiar but tastes good with a cold chicken or a cold duck salad  Footnote: Veronica, Lady Maclean was a diplomat's wife and socialite who wrote several books, including cookbooks. Her first husband died young and she then married Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean who was later created a baronet.They travelled widely during their 50 years together and her cookbooks contain recipes from many people she encountered along the way. Another I have in my library, Second Helpings and More Diplomatic Dishes features recipes from many diplomatic gastronomes, augmented with others "begged, borrowed or stolen from good cooks and cookery writers". She died in 2005 aged 85.  related searches : Saucy
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