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Half-Glaze Sauce
Put one pint of clear, concentrated veal gravy in a saucepan, mix with it two wineglassfuls of Madeira and a bunch of sweet herbs, and set the broth over the fire until boiling. Mix two tablespoonfuls of potato flour to a smooth paste with a little cold water, then mix it in with the broth and stir until thick. Move the pan to the side of the fire and let the sauce boil gently until reduced to two-thirds its original quantity. Skim it well, pass it through a silk sieve, and it is ready for use.
A short, wine-sharpened brown sauce that leans on a strong veal stock rather than a long-cooked espagnole. Its success rests almost entirely on the quality of that stock.
- Start with real veal stock"Clear, concentrated veal gravy" means brown veal stock already reduced until it is glossy and full-bodied, not thin broth and not canned beef consommé. If your stock does not coat a spoon lightly before you begin, reduce it first; nothing later in the method will give it depth.
- WineglassfulIn American cookbooks of this period a wineglass is about 2 fluid ounces, so two wineglassfuls is roughly 1/2 cup of Madeira. Use a dry Sercial or Verdelho; cream Madeira will make the sauce cloying.
- Potato flourThis is potato starch, sold under that name today, not potato flour ground from dried potato. Slaked in cold water it thickens clear and glossy well before the sauce reaches a boil.
- The hinge: do not hard-boil after thickeningThe hinge: keep the boil gentle after thickening -- Potato starch sets almost instantly and thins if held at a hard, rolling boil. The recipe does say to "boil gently" after "moving the pan to the side of the fire" -- read that as the barest tremble on the lowest burner, and avoid a full rolling boil once the starch is in.
- Bunch of sweet herbsA bouquet of parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf, tied so it can be lifted out. Add it whole and remove before straining; chopped herbs will muddy the finish.
- Reduction and skimmingReduced to two-thirds, you will finish with somewhere between 1 1/3 and 1 2/3 cups depending on whether you count the Madeira as part of the original quantity. Keeping the pan slightly off-centre on the heat drives the scum and fat to one side, which makes skimming easier.
- Silk sieveA fine chinois lined with a doubled square of muslin does the same job. Push with a small ladle rather than a spoon back, and do not force the last cloudy dregs through.
- Holding itServe within an hour or two. A starch-bound sauce will not reheat as forgivingly as a gelatine-rich demi-glace, and it thickens noticeably as it cools; loosen with a spoonful of hot stock rather than water.
Oscar Tschirky's half-glaze is the Waldorf's shorthand for demi-glace, the brown sauce of the classical French repertoire associated with Carême and later codified by Escoffier: in the strict French system it is espagnole and brown stock reduced together by half, a long undertaking. Hotel kitchens on both sides of the Atlantic kept faster versions, and this reads as one — a strong veal reduction, Madeira, herbs, and potato starch to give body that hours of simmering would otherwise have to supply. Potato starch (fécule) was used professionally for sauces meant to stay clear and glossy, since it left no floury taste and needed no roux. The Madeira is period-typical too: American hotel dining rooms of the 1890s used it freely in brown sauces. What the recipe assumes, and never says, is that a Waldorf cook would have had concentrated veal gravy standing by; the domestic reader buying the book in 1896 had to supply that himself.