Poivrade Sauce
INGREDIENTS for one dish of ordinary size. -6 oz. of ham, 1 oz. of butter, a clove of garlic, a bay-leaf, a sprig each of sweet thyme and basil, 2 or 3 cloves, 4 young onions, 1/2 stick of celery, a few sprigs of parsley, 1/4 pint of stock, a wineglassful of tarragon vinegar. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Mince the ham, and fry it in the butter with the onions and herbs and the cloves, over a quick fire, then add the celery, sliced, the vinegar, stock and pepper, and let all simmer for 1/2 an hour, when strain through a tammy.
TIME. hour to simmer.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A short, sharp brown sauce built on ham, aromatics and tarragon vinegar. It is more a flavoured reduction than a thickened sauce, and it reduces to very little, so read the yield note before you plan a meal around it.
- YieldStarting from 1/4 pint (5 fl oz British measure, about 2/3 cup) of stock plus a wineglass of vinegar, and losing volume to a half-hour simmer and the straining, you will finish with roughly 1/3 cup of intense sauce. That is enough to spoon over two to four portions of game, venison or beef, not to pour freely.
- A wineglassfulIn Beeton-era books this is taken as about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. It is a genuinely loose measure, so add half at first and judge the sharpness after reduction; tarragon vinegar dominates quickly.
- TammyA tammy was a fine worsted cloth used for straining and pressing sauces. A fine-mesh sieve does the same job; lining it with muslin gives the clearer result the original intends.
- Quick fireHigh heat. The ham, onions and herbs should colour properly before any liquid goes in, since that browning is a main source of the sauce's depth alongside the stock. Pale ham means a thinner, more vinegary result.
- The pepper is the pointPoivrade means peppered, and the recipe's bare instruction to add "pepper" understates it. Use coarsely crushed black peppercorns, added with the liquid rather than at the start, so they infuse without turning bitter over the long simmer.
- HamSix ounces of cured ham, minced, functions here as both fat and seasoning. A piece of unsmoked gammon or a ham hock trimming works; a heavily smoked supermarket ham will push the sauce toward smoke and salt, so hold back on salt entirely until the end.
- StockA dark veal or beef stock suits this best, and is probably what was assumed. Because nothing thickens the sauce, a gelatinous homemade stock is what gives it body; a thin cube-based stock will stay watery.
- Young onionsProbably small immature bulb onions, though the term was also used in this period for what we would call spring onions. Four shallots are the closest common substitute.
Sauce poivrade belongs to the older French repertoire of sharp, peppery sauces served with game, and by the nineteenth century it had settled into the classic kitchen as one of the standard accompaniments to venison, hare and marinated meats, usually built on a mirepoix, vinegar and a brown stock with crushed peppercorns added late. Beeton's version is a domestic compression of that method: no marinade, no long-simmered espagnole beneath it, just ham for richness and half an hour on the stove, which is how grand-restaurant sauces reached British households through books like this one. The costing of a shilling and the note that it is "seasonable at any time" are characteristic of the format, which treated every entry as a budgeting decision as much as a cooking one. The tarragon vinegar is a period marker too: flavoured vinegars were a staple of the Victorian storeroom, made at home by steeping herbs and used where a modern cook might reach for wine.