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MADEIRA SAUCE (another way)
Mince one onion very finely, and place in a stewpan with a pinch of celery-seed, two ounces of butter, two ounces of lean ham or bacon, a few savoury herbs, and a sprig of parsley. Cook until light brown, then add a table-spoonful of lemon-juice and two glasses of good Madeira. Boil till reduced, then add a little brown gravy and a lump of sugar, and strain.
A classic reduction sauce built on a mirepoix of onion and ham, thinned at the end with brown gravy. The whole character depends on how far the wine is taken down.
- The hinge: reduce properly"Boil till reduced" means cook the Madeira and lemon juice down until the pan is nearly syrupy and the bubbles turn thick and slow — five to eight minutes at a fast simmer. Stop short of that and the sauce tastes thin and sharp; the brown gravy will not fix it.
- Two glasses of MadeiraA wine glass in Victorian recipe books is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so roughly half a cup in total, but the measure is genuinely loose in this period. Half a cup gives a sauce in balance with the quantity of butter and ham here.
- Which MadeiraUse a drinkable bottle — Sercial or Verdelho for a drier sauce, Rainwater if you want a touch of sweetness. Bottles sold as "cooking Madeira" are often salted, which will throw the seasoning off, particularly alongside the ham.
- Brown gravyIn books of this kind this usually means a made brown sauce or reduced brown stock rather than the drippings from a roast, though the term covered both. Demi-glace, or good reduced veal or beef stock lightly thickened, is the modern equivalent; the recipe says only "a little", so add a small quantity and judge the consistency.
- StewpanA stewpan is a straight-sided saucepan with a lid. Any heavy saucepan works; choose one wide enough that the wine reduces quickly rather than stewing.
- A lump of sugarPeriod sugar lumps varied in size; reckon on roughly a teaspoon or so. It is there to round the acidity of the lemon and the wine, not to sweeten — taste before adding more.
- Cook until light brownButter, onion and ham together over medium heat, 8 to 10 minutes. Light brown is the target: darker and the onion turns bitter, which a strained sauce cannot hide.
- Straining and finishingPress the solids firmly in a fine sieve to recover the liquid, then discard them. Once strained, keep the sauce below a simmer; if you want it glossier, whisk in a knob of cold butter off the heat.
- YieldA small quantity, depending on how much gravy is added — enough for perhaps four servings alongside beef fillet, tongue, ham or braised veal.
Madeira sauce is one of the small compound sauces of the nineteenth-century professional repertoire, made by reducing fortified wine into a brown sauce base; French kitchens listed it as sauce madère, a derivative of espagnole. Madeira was fortified and, on the long tropical sea voyages, incidentally heated — an effect later reproduced deliberately on shore — and the resulting wine keeps unusually well once opened, an advantage in a kitchen without refrigeration and plausibly part of the reason it was reached for in cooking. Cassell's gives several versions of the sauce, this one relying on lean ham and celery seed for savour rather than a long-simmered stock, which may suggest it was intended for a household cook working faster and with less larder support than a hotel kitchen would have had. The pairing with beef, tongue and ham persisted in English cookery into the twentieth century.