Sauce Suprême
2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 tablespoon hot cream 1 cup chicken stock 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon chopped parsley Salt and pepper Melt the butter, but do not brown it; add the flour as in cream sauce, then the cream and stock gradually, and the seasoning and lemon juice after it is taken from the fire.
A white roux sauce built on chicken stock rather than milk. It comes together in five minutes and the only real risks are browning the butter and lumping the flour.
- The hingeAdd the liquid gradually to the cooked roux, whisking constantly, and let the sauce come to a simmer for two or three minutes before finishing. Flour needs that simmer to lose its raw taste and reach full thickening power.
- Off the heat for the acidThe lemon juice goes in after the pan leaves the fire, as written. Acid added to a hot cream-enriched sauce over direct heat encourages curdling and dulls the brightness the juice is there to provide.
- The parsleyIt is listed among the ingredients but never mentioned in the method. Stir it in at the end with the lemon juice; a tablespoon of chopped parsley cooked into the sauce turns drab.
- Cream quantityOne tablespoon of hot cream to a cup of stock is a token enrichment, not a cream sauce. The cream is called for hot, which at least avoids chilling the sauce as it goes in. Modern versions of a suprême generally use more cream than this.
- StockHomemade chicken stock of the kind assumed here would generally have been more gelatinous and less consistently salted than commercial boxed stock, which is thinner and already salted, so hold back on the salt until the sauce has simmered and been tasted.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough for four modest servings over poached chicken, sweetbreads, poultry croquettes or egg dishes. It reheats gently but will need whisking and possibly a splash of stock to loosen.
- ConsistencyTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour to one cup of liquid gives a fairly thick, coating sauce by current standards. Thin with additional stock if you want something more nappant.
Sauce suprême is one of the classic derivatives of French velouté — a white roux moistened with chicken stock rather than milk, finished with cream and a squeeze of lemon — and it reached American cookbooks by way of the professional French kitchen. The name simply means "supreme," though the reason for it is often explained, traditionally rather than authoritatively, as a nod to its standing among the white sauces. Its appearance in a domestic cook book says a good deal about the period: American cooking schools of that era, following Fannie Farmer's model, taught sauces as a system of variations on one basic roux, so a home cook who had mastered cream sauce could be handed its relatives as small adjustments to a technique she already knew. The instruction "add the flour as in cream sauce" assumes exactly that prior lesson.