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Glaze for Turkeys
Skim off the fat from some meat jelly, put it in a stewpan and stir over a sharp fire until it is of the consistency of thick cream. Skim it and strain it into jars in which it should be kept until needed for use. It should be made hot before using, and brushed over the bird with a paste brush. Half-Glaze (Demi-Glaze).
Put one pint of veal broth, one pint of Spanish sauce and three ounces of meat-glaze in a saucepan and stir it over the fire. Boil for five minutes, strain through a hair-sieve, pour into jars, cover with paper and keep until wanted for use.
Two related preparations from the classical French larder: a plain meat glaze reduced from jellied stock, and the compound half-glaze built on it. Neither is difficult, but both depend on starting with real gelatinous stock.
- What "meat jelly" meansA strong brown stock — veal and beef bones, well roasted and simmered long enough that it sets firm when cold. Commercial boxed broth will not set and will not reduce to a glaze; it simply gets salty. Start with homemade stock or a gelatin-rich substitute.
- A sharp fireBrisk heat, but the reduction needs watching and frequent stirring near the end. Once it thickens to heavy cream it will scorch in seconds, and burnt glaze is unsalvageable. Expect a quart of good stock to yield only a few tablespoons.
- Spanish sauceSauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce: brown roux, brown stock, mirepoix and tomato, simmered and strained. A modern cook usually makes espagnole first, buys a prepared demi-glace or espagnole concentrate, or substitutes a well-reduced brown sauce.
- Meat-glaze by weightThree ounces is roughly a third of a cup of the stiff, jelly-like glaze made in the first paragraph — spoon it in cold and let it melt into the liquid.
- PintsUS pints, 16 fl oz each, so the half-glaze starts from two pints of liquid plus the glaze; five minutes at a boil takes off very little.
- Hair-sieveA fine horsehair sieve; a chinois or a fine-mesh strainer lined with damp cheesecloth does the same job.
- StorageIgnore the instruction to cover with paper and keep in the larder. Both preparations are low-acid meat stocks and belong in the refrigerator for a few days or the freezer for months — glaze freezes well in ice-cube trays.
- Applying itWarm the glaze until just pourable and brush it on a bird that has cooled somewhat; on a hot surface it runs off, and on a cold one it sets in streaks. Two thin coats give the lacquered shine this was written for.
Glace de viande and demi-glace are the backbone of the nineteenth-century professional kitchen, where stock was reduced for hours into a portable concentrate that could stand in for hours of work at service time. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his Cook Book in 1896, and it reads in places like the working notes of a French brigade transplanted to Fifth Avenue — Spanish sauce, hair-sieves, paste brushes and all. Glazing a turkey mattered most for cold buffet work, where a bird was carved, reassembled and coated to look glossy under the lights of a banquet room; the technique descends from the elaborate cold presentations codified by Carême and still current in Escoffier's day. The habit of storing such glazes in paper-covered jars in a cool larder belongs to a kitchen with no refrigeration and a cook on the premises every day.