Mirepoix
It is probable that one of these days the common sense of mankind will rise in rebellion against Mirepoix this word and abolish it. What is the Duke of Mirepoix to us because his wife was amiable to Louis XV.?
If she be not fair to me, What care I how fair she be?
The Duke of Mirepoix made himself convenient to the king, and his name is now convenient to the people-the convenient name for the faggot of vegetables that flavours a stew or a sauce.
Take two carrots, two onions, two shalots, two bayleaves, a sprig of thyme, a clove of garlic; mince them very small with half a pound of fat bacon and half a pound of raw ham, and pass them in butter with pepper and salt. The Mirepoix is from this moment complete. It will afterwards, according to need, be moistened and heated with wine, and then it will be a Mirepoix of white wine or of red to be added to stock or to sauce, to simmer in it and give it a flavour.
The published receipts say nothing about the mincing. The direction is to simmer the Mirepoix for a couple of hours in order to extract the flavour, and then to strain it. On the other hand it will be found that to mince the Mirepoix fine with a three-bladed mincing knife (see Mincing Knife) will in ten minutes save a vast amount of time in cooking. It may require two hours to cook an onion or a carrot whole and to extract all their flavour; but onions, carrots, and bayleaves reduced to minute particles yield all their excellence in a minute or two. In another point the foregoing receipt differs from the received authorities. They enjoin a quantity of veal and much more ham. But the veal is waste-there is little or no flavour in the infant beef, and its only use is to render the Mirepoix gelatinous. There is not the same objection to the ham; but it is not too much to say that since Spanish notions on cookery became fashionable in France, now nigh two hundred years ago, the great cooks of Europe have become demented about ham, and have made all their Moisten sauces run upon gammon. More about this ham infatuation when we come to discuss the theory of the sauces.