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Claremont Sauce
Chop some onions, put them into a saucepan with a small quantity of oil and fry them until well cooked; add some light veal gravy and boil it, skimming off the oil as it rises. The sauce is then ready for serving.
A brief nineteenth-century sauce formula of the kind Oscar wrote for professionals who already knew the proportions. Everything hinges on the two words light veal gravy, and on skimming.
- What "light veal gravy" meansNot a flour-thickened brown gravy but pale veal stock, lightly reduced or barely bound — what a modern kitchen calls a light jus de veau. A good unsalted veal or chicken stock, reduced by a third, stands in acceptably; the sauce should coat a spoon thinly, not cling.
- Proportions, since none are givenFor about 1½ cups of finished sauce, use 2 medium onions (roughly 10 oz), 2 tablespoons oil, and 2 cups stock. Simmer 20 to 30 minutes until the onions have collapsed and the liquid has tightened.
- "Fry them until well cooked" is not browning"Fry them until well cooked" probably means soft rather than deeply browned, though the recipe does not say so: cook the onions gently, 15 to 20 minutes with occasional stirring. Heavy colouring pushes the sauce towards a darker, more bitter register.
- The skimming is the techniqueThe oil separates and rises as the sauce cooks, and pulling it off with a ladle or a folded paper towel is what leaves the sauce clean-tasting rather than greasy. The recipe says to boil it; tilting the pot slightly on the burner helps the fat gather on one side for removal.
- Smooth or rusticOscar leaves the onions in. A blender or a pass through a fine sieve gives a smoother, paler sauce; leaving it as is makes a coarser, homelier sauce for a chop.
- Seasoning and finishingNo salt is mentioned, and the veal gravy would likely have carried its own. Taste at the end and salt to suit; a knob of cold butter whisked in off the heat gives shine.
- Yield and servingEnough for about four portions. It suits plain roasted or grilled meats — veal cutlets, lamb chops, calf's liver — and boiled or braised vegetables that need a savoury coating, though the recipe itself names no accompaniment.
Oscar Tschirky's The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896) draws heavily on the French repertoire. The name may be an anglicized spelling of the French Clermont, but the connection is speculative: classical Clermont garnishes are more usually associated with chestnuts and cabbage than with onions. New Yorkers of the period would also have known the Claremont Inn, the fashionable roadhouse on Riverside Drive near Grant's Tomb. Either way, the substance is old and unglamorous — onions cooked in fat and let down with veal stock — and the terseness of the instructions suggests a book written for cooks who needed the idea, not the measurements.