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Sauce Tyrolienne
To three-fourths cup Mayonnaise add one-half tablespoon each finely chopped capers and parsley, one finely chopped gherkin, and one-half can tomatoes, stewed, strained, and cooked until reduced to two tablespoons. Serve with any kind of fried fish.
A cold compound mayonnaise, closer to a tomato-spiked tartare than to anything hot. The whole success of it rests on how far you take the tomato.
- The hinge: reduce, then coolThe half can of tomatoes has to come down to two tablespoons, a thick, almost paste-like reduction; that means slow simmering and stirring, judged by consistency rather than by the clock. Let it cool completely before it meets the mayonnaise, or the emulsion may loosen.
- "One-half can tomatoes"Can sizes of the period were not standardised as they are now, and tomatoes commonly came in cans considerably larger than a modern 14-15 oz tin, so the starting quantity is uncertain; the recipe's real instruction is the finished volume, two tablespoons. Whole peeled tomatoes, crushed and strained of seeds, give the cleanest result.
- Strained means sievedPush the stewed tomatoes through a fine sieve before reducing. Skins and seeds left in will show as flecks in a sauce that is meant to be smooth and pale coral.
- GherkinA sour pickled cucumber in brine, not the sweet gherkins sold in most supermarkets today. Sweet ones will throw the balance; use a cornichon or a small dill pickle.
- CapersBrined capers should be drained and rinsed; salt-packed ones need a proper soak. Chop them fine so they distribute rather than arriving in salty bursts.
- Homemade mayonnaiseFannie Farmer's mayonnaise, given elsewhere in the book, is raw yolk and oil. If you make it from scratch rather than using a jar, use pasteurized eggs — this sauce is never cooked.
- Yield and servingAbout one cup, enough for four to six as an accompaniment. Make it several hours ahead so the capers and pickle season the mayonnaise through, and serve it cold against hot fried fish.
Tyrolienne is one of the standard derivative sauces of French classical cookery, existing in both a hot form and this cold one, essentially a mayonnaise slackened with tomato purée and sharpened with pickles. The name gestures at the Tyrol, though the connection is decorative rather than geographical — nineteenth-century restaurant kitchens named compound sauces after places, people and regiments with a fairly free hand. Its appearance in the Boston Cooking School book is a sign of how thoroughly Fannie Farmer's readers were expected to absorb the French repertoire: the fish sauces sit alongside plain drawn butter, and are treated as ordinary household work. The tomato reduction in particular reflects the moment when canned tomatoes had become cheap and reliable enough in American kitchens to stand in year-round for a fresh purée.