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Volaille à la Créole
Sauce à l'Ambassadrice.
Ingredients.
Half a pint of Espagnole Sauce.
One teaspoonful of Red Currant Jelly.
One tablespoonful of Lemon-juice.
A pinch of Sugar, Cayenne, and Salt.
Two ounces of Sultanas, blanched.
Boil these all well together, add the sultanas and serve.
A short finishing sauce built on Espagnole, the brown mother sauce, and sharpened with fruit. Everything depends on the base, which the book assumes you already have on hand.
- Espagnole firstThis is a small sauce, not a stand-alone one. You need a proper Espagnole — brown roux, brown stock, mirepoix, tomato, reduced and strained — or, failing that, a well-reduced brown veal stock thickened lightly. A tin of gravy will taste of tin.
- Half a pintIn a British book, a pint is 20 fluid ounces, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. That is a small quantity of finishing sauce — enough to spoon over several portions rather than to pool.
- "Blanched" sultanasHere it most likely means covered with boiling water and left a few minutes to swell and clean them, then drained — not cooked. Two or three minutes in hot water is plenty.
- Add the fruit last, off the heatAdd the fruit last -- The instruction to boil reads as applying to the liquid; the sultanas go in afterwards. Keep the sauce gentle once they are in, so they do not burst.
- Redcurrant jelly and lemonA teaspoon of jelly and a tablespoon of lemon juice against 10 fl oz of sauce is a light sweet-sour accent, not a fruit sauce. Taste before serving; you may want less sugar or none.
- CayenneA pinch means a pinch. Cayenne here is for warmth behind the sweetness, and it strengthens as the sauce stands, so season shy and correct before serving.
- Strain or notIf your Espagnole has any sediment, pass it through a fine sieve before the sultanas go in.
- What it goes withA sweet-sharp brown sauce of this kind suits roast or braised chicken, guinea fowl, duck and venison, spooned over or around rather than as a pool the meat sits in.
Espagnole and its many small sauces belong to the classical French repertoire codified in the early nineteenth century and carried into British and American high-class cookery by chefs trained in that system — hence a book of this kind assuming, without comment, that half a pint of it is standing ready. The dedication-style name is typical of the period's kitchen French: dishes and sauces were christened à l'Ambassadrice, à la Reine, à la Financière and so on, sometimes for a real patron and often simply as a flattering label for a particular garnish or finish, so such names describe a formula rather than commemorate a documented person. The formula itself — a brown sauce lifted with redcurrant jelly, lemon and dried fruit — reflects the long European habit of pairing game and dark poultry with sweet-sharp accompaniments, a taste that survives in Cumberland sauce and in the redcurrant jelly still set beside roast venison.