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Mirepoix
A flavouring for made dishes, which should be always at hand and ready for use. The following extract of meat and vegetables is to be recommended. Brown in a stewpan, with three ounces of butter, a pound of uncooked ham, and half that weight of fat bacon, cut into small pieces. Slice two carrots, two onions, and two shallots, and add them, with a couple of bay-leaves, a bunch of parsley, and a sprig or two of thyme. When slightly coloured, pour in two quarts of good veal stock, and a bottle of light wine. Spice, pounded mace, and cloves may be added, but a dozen peppercorns, bruised, are indispensable. Boil, strain, and use this flavouring when wanted. Time, two hours to simmer.
This is not the diced vegetable base a modern cook calls mirepoix, but the older French sense of the word: a rich, fatty, wine-laced stock kept on hand to moisten and flavour braises and sauces. Treat it as a concentrated cooking liquid rather than a soup.
- Salt is the hingeA pound of uncooked ham plus half a pound of fat bacon will salt this heavily, and it is meant to be added to other dishes rather than eaten alone. Use unsmoked gammon or a mild cured ham, add no salt at any stage, and season only the finished dish it goes into.
- "Uncooked ham"This means raw cured ham — green gammon or a piece of unsmoked country ham — not supermarket sliced cooked ham, which will dissolve into fibres and give no gelatine. A hock or a thick end piece works well.
- "Light wine"A dry white of no great weight: Muscadet, Chablis, an unoaked Chardonnay. A modern bottle is 750 ml; the two quarts of stock are imperial quarts, nearer 2.3 litres than 2, so with the wine you have roughly three quarts of liquid before reduction.
- Veal stockUnsalted veal stock is still sold frozen or in tubs; a mild unsalted chicken stock is the practical substitute. Do not use a bouillon cube, which is mostly salt and will make the result inedible with the ham.
- BrowningRender the ham and bacon over moderate heat until the fat runs and the pieces colour, then add the vegetables and take them only to the "slightly coloured" stage. Hard browning of the shallots and bay turns the finished flavouring bitter.
- Simmer, do not boilThe instruction reads "Boil... two hours to simmer." Bring it up, skim the grey scum once, then hold it at a bare tremble. A rolling boil emulsifies the pork fat into the liquid and clouds it.
- DegreaseThere is a great deal of fat here by design. Strain, chill, and lift the set cap of fat off before use — the fat itself is worth keeping for frying, but it should not go into a sauce.
- Yield and keepingExpect about 2 quarts of strained liquid. The Victorian larder assumed rapid use; refrigerate no more than three or four days, or freeze in half-cup portions or an ice-cube tray and drop them into braises as needed.
- How it is usedA "made dish" means anything composed and sauced rather than plainly roasted. Use this in place of water or plain stock when braising veal, poultry or sweetbreads, or reduce it hard to a glaze for finishing a sauce.
The word is generally traced to the 18th-century French household of the Duc de Lévis-Mirepoix, whose cook is traditionally credited with the preparation — a story repeated in most cookery dictionaries and documented in none of them. What is certain is that in Carême's and Gouffé's usage a mirepoix was a rich aromatic mixture of ham, bacon, root vegetables and herbs moistened with wine and stock, used as a bed or a braising liquor for delicate meats; only later did English and American kitchens narrow the term to the plain diced carrot, onion and celery. It belongs to the grammar of the professional kitchen: one of the standing preparations a well-run house kept ready so that a sauce could be built in minutes. The scale — a pound of ham, two quarts of veal stock, a whole bottle of wine, all reduced to a flavouring — says a good deal about the servant labour and the daily butcher's delivery such a kitchen took for granted.