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Sauce Allemande
1 pint white stock; 6 mushrooms; yolks of 3 eggs; juice of 1/2 a lemon, and a little strip of the rind; 1 saltspoonful salt; 1 teaspoonful flour; 1 teaspoonful minced parsley; 1 spoonful butter.
Put the stock into a saucepan with the mushrooms cut small, and the salt, lemon-peel, and parsley. Let it come to a boil and simmer slowly for an hour. Thicken with the flour, boil a few minutes, and strain. Add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs, put it back on the fire, and stir constantly until very hot. It must not boil again after the eggs are added, or it will be spoiled. Take from the fire and add the butter and lemon juice, stirring until well blended.
Serve with either fish, meat, or vegetables.
A velouté finished with an egg-yolk liaison, written for a cook who already knows how eggs behave in a hot pan. Everything depends on the last two minutes.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the yolks go in, hold the sauce between 160 and 180F, stirring without stopping. The recipe is explicit that it must not boil again; if it does, the yolks scramble into threads suspended in the broth, and straining or hard whisking will only sometimes save it.
- Temper the yolksThe original says only to add the beaten yolks. Whisk a ladleful of the hot strained stock into them first, then return the mixture to the pan. Adding cold yolks straight to a hot liquid is the usual way this sauce fails.
- White stockVeal or chicken stock, unbrowned and unsalted or barely salted. A pale, gelatinous homemade stock gives the body that a single teaspoon of flour cannot. Commercial low-sodium chicken stock works; avoid anything dark or heavily seasoned.
- A saltspoonfulAbout a quarter teaspoon. Adjust at the end, after the reduction of an hour's simmering has concentrated whatever salt the stock carried.
- The flourOne teaspoon to a pint gives a very light body, which is intended: the yolks do most of the thickening. Slake it in a little cold stock or work it into a knob of soft butter before stirring it in, or it will lump.
- "1 spoonful butter"Unspecified in the original. A tablespoon, roughly 1/2 oz, is the sensible reading for a pint of sauce. Add it off the heat in pieces so it emulsifies rather than melting into a slick.
- Mushrooms and lemon peelCultivated white or cremini mushrooms are fine; they are strained out and serve only to flavour. Use a peeled strip of zest with no white pith, and pull it after the hour if the sauce tastes at all bitter.
- Yield and holdingAbout a pint, reduced a little, which serves six to eight as a sauce. It will not reheat over direct heat; keep it warm in a bain-marie below a simmer and use it within the hour.