Home › August › Sauce Viennaise
Sauce Viennaise
Reduce one small can of tomatoes by slow cooking to a thick pulp; when strained there should be two tablespoons. To threefourths cup Mayonnaise Dressing add three-fourths tablespoon finely chopped capers, one teaspoon finely chopped parsley, two teaspoons each finely chopped gherkins and olives, one teaspoon finely chopped onion or chives. Add tomato pulp, mix well and keep in a cool place until ready to serve.
A cold compound mayonnaise in the classic mould: the base dressing is bought or made separately, and everything added to it is chopped fine and folded in. The only real work is the tomato.
- The tomato is the hingeTwo tablespoons of strained pulp from a whole can means cooking it down until it is nearly paste, then pushing it through a sieve to remove seeds and skin. Rushing this leaves the sauce loose and weeping; the water has to go before the pulp meets the mayonnaise.
- "One small can of tomatoes"Can sizes were not standardised in this period, so the quantity is approximate; a modern 14.5 oz can is a reasonable stand-in, cooked down hard to yield the two tablespoons the recipe asks for. Tomato paste is not a substitute here in flavour, though a scant tablespoon thinned with a little of the canned juice will do at a pinch.
- Mayonnaise DressingThe book means a made-to-order egg-and-oil mayonnaise rather than a jarred one. Commercial mayonnaise works; if you make your own and are serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immunocompromised, use pasteurised eggs, since nothing in this sauce is ever heated.
- GherkinsWhat is wanted here is a small sour pickled cucumber; cornichons are the closest match. Sweet pickle will throw the balance.
- Chop everything fine and drain itCapers, gherkins and olives all carry brine. Blot them after chopping or the sauce slackens as it stands in the refrigerator.
- "A cool place"The refrigerator, and at least half an hour so the onion and capers bleed into the dressing. Keep it no more than two days, less if the mayonnaise is homemade.
- Yield and servingAbout one cup, enough for six as an accompaniment. It belongs with cold poached salmon or other cold fish, cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs, or a composed summer salad.
Sauce viennaise belongs to the family of cold sauces built on mayonnaise by the addition of chopped pickles, capers and herbs, alongside tartare and remoulade; the distinguishing touch here is the tomato, which colours the sauce a pale coral and softens the vinegar edge of the pickles. The names of these compounds were never rigidly fixed, and "viennaise" attached to several different preparations in period kitchens, so a French manual and an American household book of the same decade may not agree on what it contains. Its appeal is practical rather than sentimental: a sauce that requires no cooking beyond reducing a can of tomatoes, keeps in the cool for a day or two, and dresses the cold fish and cold fowl that a summer dinner leaned on.