Home › The Principles of Cookery › Tarragon Sauce, for Boiled Fowls
Tarragon Sauce, for Boiled Fowls
Take a small bunch of tarragon, and put it into a saucepan with a pint of nicely-seasoned white stock and the white of an egg which has been beaten up with two table-spoonfuls of cold water and a table-spoonful of tarragon vinegar. Whisk all thoroughly over the fire until the broth boils, then draw it to the side, let it simmer gently for a quarter of an hour, and after-wards let it stand to settle for another quarter of an hour. Strain through a jelly-bag, and when clear, reduce the sauce by quick boiling until it is rich and good. Time, a quarter of an hour to boil, and a quarter of an hour to settle.
This is not a thickened sauce but a clarified stock reduction — closer to a light consommé glaze poured round a boiled bird. Everything depends on the clarification, so treat the egg white as the working part of the recipe rather than a garnish.
- The hinge: whisk until it boils, then stopThe egg white coagulates and drags the cloudy particles up into a raft. Once the liquid comes to the boil, stop whisking entirely and do not stir again — breaking the raft afterwards will disperse the solids back through the stock and no amount of straining will fix it.
- A pintAn imperial pint, so 20 fl oz, about 2½ US cups. The recipe gives no target volume for the finished sauce; reduce until it is, in its own words, 'rich and good'.
- StrainingA jelly-bag is a fine flannel or cotton cone. A double layer of damp muslin or a coffee filter in a sieve works the same way. Ladle rather than pour, and let it drip without squeezing or you will push cloud through.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, but easily made by steeping a few sprigs in white wine vinegar for a week. The acid helps the clarification set as well as reinforcing the flavour; do not substitute plain white distilled vinegar, which is harsher.
- French, not Russian, tarragonThe Victorian kitchen meant French tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus var. sativa), which has the anise perfume. Russian tarragon looks similar and tastes of almost nothing. The recipe leaves 'a small bunch' to the cook's judgement.
- White stockAn unroasted veal or chicken stock, made with pale bones and no browned vegetables. A good unsalted chicken stock stands in, but note that reduction concentrates salt — season lightly at the start and correct only at the end.
- "Rich and good"The finishing reduction should be glossy and coat a spoon thinly, which needs a stock with real gelatine in it. Stock made from wings, feet or a knuckle of veal will body up; a thin commercial broth will simply go salty.
- ServingSend it hot in a boat, or spoon a little over the carved fowl. A knob of cold butter whisked in off the heat at the last moment will give more body, though the recipe itself does not call for it.
Tarragon is strongly associated with the French rather than the English sauce tradition, and Cassell's — compiled in the 1870s and reissued for decades — carries a number of these small stock-based sauces drawn from professional French practice. Boiled fowl was a staple of the mid-Victorian dinner table and of the invalid's tray, mild to the point of dullness, so the repertoire of sauces to accompany it was correspondingly large: egg, parsley, oyster, celery, béchamel, and this one. The clarification with egg white and the finish by hard reduction are straight consommé technique, and the fact that a household dictionary expects its reader to own a jelly-bag and to judge when a sauce is 'rich and good' suggests something about the standard of kitchen the book addressed. Tarragon vinegar was a common store-cupboard item in this period, a usual way of keeping a herb whose flavour does not survive drying well.