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ALLEMAND SAUCE (another way)
Put into a saucepan two ounces of butter. When melted, stir in briskly a dessert-spoonful of flour and half a pint of white stock, or failing that, water. Add a little lemon-peel, salt and pepper to taste, a small lump of sugar, an onion, and a little nutmeg. Let all simmer by the side of the fire for a little while, then strain. Mix with the sauce half a cupful of milk or cream, and the yolk of one egg; put it on the fire once more, and stir it briskly till it thickens. It must not boil. Add a little lemon-juice. Time, forty minutes. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for three-quarters of a pint of sauce.
A velouté finished with egg yolk — the hinge is the final thickening, which must be held below a simmer or the yolk will curdle and the sauce will break into grains.
- Do not let it boilOnce the yolk and milk go in, keep the pan at 160–175F, stirring constantly, until it coats the spoon. If you have a thermometer, use it; above about 180F the yolk sets and the sauce granulates. Pulling it off the heat to finish, or working over barely simmering water, gives more margin.
- Quantities in modern termsHalf a pint here is an English half-pint, 10 imperial fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons; a dessert-spoonful of flour is roughly 2 teaspoons. Half a cupful of milk or cream is about 4 fl oz.
- That is a very thin rouxTwo teaspoons of flour to a cup of liquid leaves the sauce loose on purpose — the egg yolk does most of the thickening. If you want a coating sauce rather than a pouring one, take the flour to a tablespoon and cook it a minute in the butter without colouring.
- "By the side of the fire"On a coal range this meant the cooler edge of the hob: a bare simmer with almost no evaporation. Use the lowest burner setting, partly covered.
- The onion and lemon-peelBoth are aromatics to be strained out, not eaten, so leave the onion whole or halved and pare the peel in strips with no white pith. A small onion is plenty for a cup of sauce.
- White stockAn unroasted veal or chicken stock, pale and lightly gelatinous. Unsalted chicken stock is the practical substitute; the recipe's fallback of plain water makes a noticeably flatter sauce, so season more assertively if you go that way.
- Lemon juice lastAdding acid before the yolk has set makes curdling more likely. A teaspoon or so off the heat is enough — it should sharpen the sauce, not announce itself.
- Yield and useThree-quarters of an imperial pint is about 1¾ US cups, enough for four to six servings over poached chicken, veal, boiled fowl or vegetables. It does not reheat well; make it close to serving and hold it warm, not hot.
Allemande — "German sauce" — is one of the classic small sauces of the French repertoire: a velouté (white stock thickened with a pale roux) enriched with egg yolk and cream and sharpened with lemon. Its name is generally traced to the practice of naming sauces for nations rather than to any German origin, and Carême, who codified much of this system in the early nineteenth century, is often said to have preferred calling it sauce parisienne on patriotic grounds. This "another way" version is the domestic shortcut, allowing water in place of stock and a mere dessert-spoonful of flour, on the assumption that the egg yolk will carry the sauce. The "probable cost, 8d." is characteristic of the book, which priced nearly every dish so a household could budget by the page.