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POIVRADE SAUCE (another way)
Take a slice of lean ham, and cut it into dice. Put them into a stewpan with two ounces of fresh butter, and add a carrot, a turnip, a shallot, and two young onions, all finely sliced, together with a blade of mace and six or eight peppercorns. Stir these over a gentle fire until they are slightly browned, then add very gradually four table-spoonfuls of vinegar, three table-spoonfuls of port, a lump of sugar, and a quarter of a pint of good brown sauce. Simmer all gently together until the sauce is smooth, thick, and nicely flavoured, then strain, and serve immediately. When brown sauce is not at hand it may be easily made by mixing over a gentle fire equal proportions of butter and flour, stirring the mixture constantly until it is slightly browned, and then moistening it with boiling stock or even water. Time to boil the sauce, half an hour. Probable cost, 10d., exclusive of the port. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A classic peppery brown sauce for game, venison and roast mutton, built on a mirepoix and a sharp vinegar-and-port reduction. The whole thing hangs on browning the vegetables and ham slowly rather than scorching them.
- The hinge: brown, don't burnThe ham and vegetables should take colour gently until they are a light nut brown. Anything darker turns the finished sauce bitter, and no amount of port or sugar will pull it back.
- Imperial measuresA quarter of a pint here is 5 fl oz Imperial, about 2/3 cup. Victorian spoon measures were not standardised, so treat 4 tablespoons of vinegar as a starting point and taste as you reduce.
- Brown sauceThis is a brown roux-based sauce of the espagnole family, not the bottled condiment sold under that name today. The book's fallback is a plain brown roux: equal proportions of butter and flour cooked until slightly browned, then moistened with boiling stock. Use stock rather than water if you have it, though the book allows either.
- Add the vinegar graduallyPouring it in all at once drops the pan temperature and steams the vegetables. Adding it in stages lets each addition reduce and concentrate, which is where the sauce gets its bite.
- MaceA blade of mace is a piece of the dried aril of nutmeg, still sold whole in spice shops. If you only have ground, use a small pinch, since it will not be strained out and can dominate.
- Shallot and young onions"Young onions" here most likely means spring onions or small salad onions rather than the tops alone. Slice bulbs and all.
- Timing and finishingHalf an hour at a bare simmer is right; the sauce should coat a spoon before straining. Press the solids firmly in the sieve to extract flavour, then serve at once, as it will skin over as it cools.
- YieldThe stated five or six portions means five or six spoonfuls alongside a roast, not a cup each. Rather under the roughly 8½ fl oz of liquid that goes into the pan, once it has simmered down and been strained.
Poivrade takes its name straight from poivre, pepper, and belongs to the family of sharp brown sauces that French cookery developed for game, where the meat is strong enough to stand up to vinegar and peppercorns. In the classical scheme it sits close to sauce chevreuil and sauce venaison, and is essentially an espagnole cut with an acid reduction. Cassell's, published for middle-class British households in the later nineteenth century, routinely offered "another way" versions of French sauces with an eye on the budget: note the ham dice standing in for a longer game-trimming stock, the costing at tenpence, and the frank admission that a cook may not have brown sauce at hand and can knock up a brown roux instead. That last concession says a good deal about the gap between the professional kitchens Carême wrote for and the single-servant homes this dictionary was addressing.