Espagnole
INGREDIENTS for sauce for one entrée.-2 slices of lean ham, 1 lb. of veal, 1½ pint of stock, 2 or 3 sprigs of parsley, 1/24 a bay-leaf, 2 or 3 sprigs of savoury herbs, 6 green onions, 3 shalots, 2 cloves, 1 blade of mace, 2 glasses of sherry or madeira, thickening of butter and flour. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Cut up the ham and veal into smal SPARROWS. square pieces, and put them into a stewpan. Moisten these with 1/2 pint of the stock, and simmer till the bottom of the stewpan is covered with a nicely-coloured glaze, when put in a few more spoonfuls to detach it. Add the remainder of the stock, with the spices, herbs, shalots and onions, and simmer very gently for 1 hour. Strain and skim off every particle of fat, and, when required for use, thicken with butter and flour, or with a a little li roux. Add the wine, and, if necessary, a seasoning of cayenne, when it will be ready to serve.
TIME.-1 hour.
Note. The wine in this sauce may be omitted, and an onion sliced and fried of a nice brown substituted for it. This sauce or gravy is used for many dishes, and with most people is a general favourite.
This is Mrs Beeton's brown sauce built on ham, veal and stock rather than on long-roasted bones. It is a reduction exercise more than a cooking exercise: the flavour comes from letting the meat juices catch and glaze on the bottom of the pan, then lifting them with stock.
- The hinge: build the glaze twiceThe hinge: build the glaze -- Simmering the ham and veal in only half a pint of stock until the pan bottom is covered with a coloured film is the whole point of the recipe. Let it go to a deep amber, not brown-black, then loosen it with a few more spoonfuls of stock as directed before adding the rest; skipping this gives a pale, thin sauce.
- Quantities and yield1 1/2 pints is 30 fl oz, about 850 ml, and 1 lb of veal is 450 g. After an hour's simmer, straining and skimming the volume will have reduced appreciably; the recipe describes the result simply as sauce for one entree.
- Glasses of wineA wine glass in this period is reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so two glasses is roughly 120 ml. Add it at the end as directed and let it bubble a minute or two so the alcohol softens.
- Green onions and shalotsGreen onions here means spring onions, whole with their tops; shalots are shallots. Six spring onions and three shallots is right for the volume given.
- Blade of maceOne blade is a single strip of the lacy aril around a nutmeg. If you only have ground mace, a scant pinch is the equivalent, but strain carefully as it will cloud the sauce.
- ThickeningFor this quantity, 25 g butter cooked with 25 g flour to a light brown roux is about right. Whisk the hot strained liquid into the roux off the heat, then simmer ten minutes and skim again; a roux-thickened sauce throws scum and needs the second skimming.
- Veal cutsUse veal shin or shoulder rather than escalope; the cheaper collagen-rich cuts give the body that makes this sauce cling. Beef shin is a reasonable substitute if veal is hard to find, though the result is darker and less delicate.
- KeepingThe strained, unthickened base freezes well and is worth making in double quantity. Thicken and add wine only when you need it, as directed.
Sauce espagnole is one of the grand foundation sauces of French cookery, classified among the mother sauces by Careme in the early nineteenth century and retained in that role by later codifiers. The name is usually traced, on traditional rather than documented grounds, to Spanish cooks at the French court and to the Spanish ham that gives the sauce its depth; Mrs Beeton's version keeps that ham. Her recipe belongs to the older, lighter school in which the sauce is essentially a heavily reduced meat glaze finished with wine and a roux, rather than the tomato-and-mirepoix version that dominates twentieth-century kitchens. That she gives an average cost of 2s. 6d. and a note on omitting the wine in favour of a browned fried onion tells you a great deal about her readership: an aspirational middle-class household that wanted the French repertoire but had to weigh the price of a bottle of madeira against the week's housekeeping.