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Godard Sauce
Put about half a pound of pieces of raw ham into a saucepan with an onion and a carrot, both sliced, and one-fourth pound of butter; fry them until lightly browned, then pour in one and one-half pints of dry champagne, and simmer for half an hour. Strain the liquor into a stewpan, and mix with it one quart of Spanish sauce and one breakfast cupful of essence of mushrooms. Boil the sauce till it is of a thick creamy consistency, then strain it through a broth napkin into a bain-marie pan. It is then ready for use.
A classic French compound sauce built on espagnole, reduced with ham and champagne. Nothing here is dangerous or obsolete, but almost every component name has drifted since 1896.
- Spanish sauceThis is sauce espagnole: brown roux, brown veal or beef stock, tomato and mirepoix, simmered and skimmed for hours. One quart of it is the backbone of the recipe, so the sauce is only as good as that base — a reduced brown stock thickened lightly with roux is the honest substitute.
- Essence of mushroomsNot extract from a jar. It is the strained liquor from mushrooms cooked in a little butter and water, then reduced until concentrated and intensely savoury. A breakfast cupful is roughly 8 to 10 fl oz; since the liquor is reduced, it takes a considerable quantity of mushrooms to produce that much.
- MeasuresOne and one-half pints of champagne is 3 cups (about 700 ml) by American measure. A breakfast cup is the largest of the Victorian cups, around 8 to 10 fl oz. One quart of Spanish sauce is 4 cups.
- Broth napkinA square of loose-woven linen or several layers of damp muslin, wrung out and used to strain the finished sauce. A fine chinois lined with damp cheesecloth does the same job; the point is to catch the fat and any grain from the roux.
- Bain-marie panA tall narrow container set in a water bath, used in professional kitchens to hold sauces hot without further reduction or skin forming. At home, a heatproof jug in a pan of water held below a simmer works, or simply cool and reheat gently.
- The champagneUse a genuinely dry sparkling wine — the recipe depends on acidity cutting the ham fat and the brown sauce. A sweet or off-dry bottle will leave the finished sauce cloying, and the bubbles are irrelevant since half an hour of simmering drives them off.
- Raw hamUncooked cured ham of the prosciutto or country-ham type, cut in scraps for flavour, not for eating. It is salty: season the sauce only at the very end, after the reduction, or it will finish over-salted.
- Yield and useThe recipe gives no yield; boiled down to a thick creamy consistency it makes enough for a large service. It was made to nap sweetbreads, veal, poultry and the elaborate garnished entrées of the period, not as a table sauce; halve or quarter the quantities for a domestic dinner.
Godard sauce belongs to the garniture à la Godard, one of the set-piece garnishes of nineteenth-century French service — quenelles, cockscombs, truffles, mushrooms and sweetbreads arranged around a large braised joint or bird, with this ham-and-champagne reduction of espagnole poured over. Who the Godard of the name was is not documented, and the explanations offered for it are tradition rather than record. The sauce was simply part of the professional repertoire a large hotel kitchen was expected to have standing in the bain-marie. Its presence in this book is a reminder of how such kitchens worked: the recipe assumes a quart of espagnole and a cup of mushroom essence already made that morning, so the sauce itself is only the last stage of a much longer day's work.