SC - Scottish/british food terms

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Philippa Alderton wrote:
> 
> Gave a friend a book on Scottish cooking, and he has a couple of questions
> on terms used. Anybody know what "single cream" or "brown sauce" refers to,
> specificly?

Single cream is a term that refers to its fat content. The closest
American equivalent is light cream, I believe. Double cream is more like
what Americans call heavy cream, while specialty items like Devonshire
or clotted cream (no, they're not synonymous, I just lumped them
together) have no real equivalent among commonly available American
products, unless perhaps you live on a dairy farm. I will now abandon
this topic in favor of something I know more about, and to give people
the opportunity to correct me ;  ).

Brown sauce is what Americans, and most of the English-speaking world,
call what the French call Espagnole sauce: it's, well, Espagnole sauce.
It's usually made from brown veal or beef stock, brown-roasted veal or
beef bones, aromatic vegetables that have been similarly caramelized (in
other words, the same stuff that is used to make a good brown stock), a
tomato product, and brown roux. For practical purposes it can be made
with brown stock, brown roux, and a bit of tomato paste, although
Escoffier would frown on such practices. (On the other hand, I seem to
recall Careme's recipe is something like six pages long.)

Since, in _theory_, brown gravies in the British Isles tend to be more
like meat jus rather than a thickened product (again, in theory), brown
sauce is a term used in British recipes to distinguish it from gravy.
I'm sure there are plenty of cases where the folk of the British Isles
eat a thickened brown gravy, but people like Mrs. Beeton would call it a
brown sauce.
   
Are you thoroughly confused yet? Phlip, tell Andrew to use some brown
gravy with a little tomato paste stirred in, just enough to color it a
sort of deep mahagony color, and a slightly richer, sharper flavor.

Adamantius 
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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