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Sauce Piquante
To one cup Brown Sauce add one tablespoon vinegar, one-half small shallot finely chopped, one tablespoon each chopped capers and pickle, and a few grains of cayenne.
A derivative sauce built on a cup of finished Brown Sauce, so nearly everything depends on the base being right before the sharp elements go in.
- The Brown Sauce baseFannie Farmer's Brown Sauce is butter and flour cooked to a nut-brown roux, then thinned with brown stock and seasoned. A cup of good reduced beef or veal stock thickened with a browned roux will stand in; a thin or pale base leaves the vinegar and capers with nothing to hold them.
- Cook out the vinegarAdd the vinegar and shallot and let the sauce simmer a minute or two before finishing. Stirred in raw at the end, the vinegar reads as harsh rather than piquant.
- Shallot quantityHalf a small shallot is roughly a teaspoon chopped. Shallot size varies widely, so measure rather than count.
- "Pickle"Most likely a sour cucumber pickle, close to a French cornichon or a firm dill gherkin. The recipe does not specify, but a sweet or bread-and-butter pickle will throw the balance.
- CapersRinse brined capers and drain salt-packed ones well, then chop. The recipe gives no order of addition; they need only enough heat to warm through.
- Cayenne"A few grains" is a pinch, well under an eighth of a teaspoon. The heat is meant to sit under the acidity, not announce itself.
- YieldRoughly a cup, which would sauce about four servings of broiled or fried meat. Sauces of this type were commonly served with tongue, pork chops, cold roast beef and grilled kidneys.
Sauce piquante is one of the small compound sauces of the French repertoire, a brown base sharpened with vinegar, shallot and something salty and sour; the name comes from piquer, to prick or sting. In the classic codifications it sits alongside the other acid-and-aromatic derivatives of brown sauce, among them poivrade, Robert and charcuti""The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book"" reflects Fannie Farmer's habit of teaching sauces as a system: master the Brown Sauce, then learn the handful of additions that turn it into something else. Sharp sauces of this kind were also useful for cold roast meat or boiled tongue at a second serving.