Cassell's dictionary of cookery

There is one compound so intimately connected with fish that we think some reference should be made to it while we are discussing the subject of the principles to be observed in cooking fish of all kinds. We refer to melted butter. There are, perhaps, few dishes more essentially English than that large tureen of so-called melted butter, but which is in reality milk, or perhaps water, thickened with butter and flour, in which the latter really predominates. There is, too, probably nothing sent to table so extravagant as ordinary melted butter, as, for some reasons unknown, the cook seems possessed with an idea that persons eat melted butter as they do soup. It will almost invariably be found that melted butter, say for four persons, is sent up in sufiicient quantity for twenty ; and as there are few cooks who know, or care even if they do know, how to utilise the melted butter that is left, too often the greater part of this expensive and extravagant sauce is absolutely thrown away. I say expensive and extravagant advisedly, for properly-made melted butter is veiy nearly literally what the name implies. As good melted butter, or, as it is sometimes called, butter-sauce, is an exceedingly nice and delicious accompaniment to most kinds of fish, and as in nine houses out of ten it is sent up in an uneatable form, I will, at the risk of being tedious, describe how to make it, and will at the same time remind cooks that melted butter is often looked upon as a crucial test of a good cook. Good melted butter is a happy medium between that very small quantity of curdled oil sent up as an accompaniment to fish at second-rate French hotels or restaurants and that large tureen brimming full of thick milk generally served in private houses. Just as in life we ofttimes learn as much from our mistakes as we do from our successes, so it is often a good method of teaching first to describe "how not to do it." The usual but wrong method of making melted butter is as follows : — The cook cuts off a lump of butter at random, and places it on a plate with about an equal quantity of flour, standing the plate in front of the fire to allow the butter to sufiiciently dissolve to enable her to mix the flour and butter altogether, which is generally done, too, with a steel knife. This kneaded butter and flour is then added to a pint or more of milk or water, or a mixture of the two, and the whole stirred together over a fire in a saucepan till thick — the reason of the butter and flour being kneaded together first being that it is then much less liable to render the sauce lumpy and curdled. All this is generally done by guess-work, and too often, owing to the quantity of flour being miscalculated, the result resembles in consistency a pudding rather than a sauce. The great mistake in this method is the absurdly large quantity of milk or water and the equally absurd small quantity of butter. The first idea the cook must clearly grasp is quantity. Butter, especially in the present day, is very expensive, and as butter-sauce consists mainly of butter, the cook must make sufiicient, but not more than sufiicient.