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Deviled Sauce
Put three peeled and chopped shallots into a saucepan, add one clove of garlic, one bay leaf, a bunch of parsley and thyme, one-half teaspoonful of cayenne and coarsely crushed white pepper, one and one-half pint of Spanish sauce, and one-half pint of veal broth. When boiling, move the sauce to the edge of the fire, and let it simmer for half an hour. Skim the sauce, strain it through a fine hair-sieve, and serve.
A classic sauce diable in the old hotel manner: a strong brown sauce sharpened with shallot and pepper, simmered gently and strained. Nothing here is difficult, but it assumes you already have two other preparations on hand.
- Spanish sauceThis is sauce espagnole " the brown mother sauce built on brown roux, brown stock and mirepoix, usually with tomato. A pint and a half is 3 cups. A good store-bought demi-glace, loosened with stock to a pourable consistency, is the practical stand-in.
- Veal brothHalf a pint is 1 cup of unsalted veal stock. Chicken stock works; avoid anything heavily salted, since the sauce reduces and concentrates over the half hour.
- "The edge of the fire"On a coal range this was the cooler zone at the perimeter of the stove top. Translate as the lowest burner setting, a bare shiver rather than a bubble, so the sauce clarifies and the fat and scum rise to be skimmed.
- Skim before you strainThe skimming is the point of the slow simmer, not an afterthought. Draw the surface repeatedly with a ladle; the sauce should come out glossy, not cloudy or greasy.
- The pepperThe line reads "one-half teaspoonful of cayenne and coarsely crushed white pepper", which may mean half a teaspoon of each or half a teaspoon of the two together; either way it is a bold hand by modern taste, but it is strained out with the aromatics and the sauce is meant to be assertive. Crack the white peppercorns coarsely rather than grinding fine, or the strained sauce turns gritty and muddy.
- Hair sieveA horsehair sieve was the fine strainer of the period. A chinois or a fine mesh strainer does the same job.
- YieldTwo pints go into the pan, so expect somewhere under that after a half hour's simmer and straining. It is a sauce for grilled or broiled meat, devilled bones, kidneys, or leftover poultry reheated under the broiler.
- FinishingOscar stops at the strainer. A knob of cold butter whisked in off the heat, or a splash of vinegar or mustard at the end, will sharpen it if your espagnole is on the sweet side.
"Devilled" is attested in English cooking by the late eighteenth century for anything made fiery with cayenne, mustard or pepper " devilled kidneys, devilled bones, devilled ham " and the French kitchen answered with sauce la diable, a brown sauce cut with shallots, white wine and pepper. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maitre d'htel, whose 1896 collection this is, was recording the working repertoire of a large American hotel kitchen built on French lines, the sort of kitchen in which a sauce like this was thirty minutes of assembly rather than a project. The reliance on standing preparations is what dates the recipe more than any ingredient in it; Oscar could assume a stockpot the way a modern cook assumes a carton.