water; finish with the juice of half a lemon, and salt to palate; then pass
the sauce through a tammy into a large _bain-marie_ for use."

We have quoted the recipe of the late M. Francatelli in full, as we believe
it is necessary to refer to some very great authority in order to knock out
the prejudice from the minds of many who think that they not only can
themselves cook, but teach others, but who are bound in the chains of
prejudice and tradition which, too often, in the most simple recipes, lead
them to follow in the footsteps of their 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