Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Marshal's Sauce
Marshal's Sauce
Pour one teacupful of green tarragon into a saucepan with one teacupful of white vinegar, a lump of sugar, and one-half saltspoonful of salt, and boil quickly until the vinegar has reduced to half its original quantity; then pour in one teacupful of turned sauce that has been stiffly reduced, and boil it up once; then stir in the yolks of three eggs beaten with a little milk or cream. Continue stirring the sauce by the side of the fire until thick, but do not allow it to boil. Strain the sauce through a fine hair-sieve, return it to the saucepan, mix with it one-fourth pound butter, and work it by the side of the fire until it has dissolved Serve the sauce while it is hot.
A classical French tarragon sauce built on a reduction, a velouté, and an egg-yolk liaison. It is Oscar's kitchen writing for cooks who already knew the mother sauces, so several terms need translating.
- Do not let it boil after the yolks go inOnce the egg yolks are stirred in, the sauce must stay below about 180F or it will scramble and break. "By the side of the fire" means gentle indirect heat; a heavy pan over low heat, or a bowl over barely simmering water, does the same job.
- "Turned sauce"This is sauce tournée, a pale velouté of veal or chicken stock thickened with a blond roux and simmered until glossy. "Stiffly reduced" means cooked down until it coats a spoon heavily. A well-reduced chicken velouté is the modern equivalent; canned or powdered gravy bases are not.
- Teacupful and saltspoonfulTeacup measures in American books of this period were not standardised; a teacupful is usually taken as somewhere between about 4 and 6 fl oz, i.e. less than a full modern measuring cup. A saltspoon is generally reckoned at 1/4 teaspoon, so half a saltspoon is a scant pinch.
- A teacupful of green tarragonFresh tarragon leaves and tender stems, loosely packed, roughly 3/4 cup. Dried tarragon will not stand in at that volume; if it is all you have, use about a tablespoon and expect a flatter, hay-like flavour.
- Lump of sugarA single cube, about a teaspoon. It is there to round the vinegar, not to sweeten the sauce.
- Hair sieveA horsehair-mesh strainer. A fine chinois or a conical strainer lined with a double layer of cheesecloth gives the same result, catching the spent tarragon and any grain in the liaison.
- Working in the butterA quarter pound is 4 oz, added in cold pieces off direct heat and swirled or whisked in gradually so it emulsifies rather than melting into an oil slick. Do not reheat hard afterwards.
- Yield and serviceAbout 1 1/2 to 2 cups, enough for six to eight portions. It belongs with poached or sautéed chicken, veal cutlets, sweetbreads or a firm white fish, and it does not hold or reheat well, so make it immediately before serving.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 Cook Book was assembled from the working repertoire of the Waldorf, which meant the French grande cuisine of the period transcribed into American kitchen English, sometimes imperfectly. This sauce sits squarely in the tarragon-and-vinegar family that also produced béarnaise, but where béarnaise finishes a reduction with yolks and butter alone, this one goes through a velouté first, giving a stock-based sauce with more body and less sharpness. Dishes and sauces styled à la maréchale are generally traced to the marshals of France, one of the many honorific names attached to garnishes and preparations in the nineteenth-century repertoire, alongside Colbert, Soubise and Mornay. The chain of reductions here — vinegar cut by half, velouté already reduced hard, then a liaison, then butter — is a fair picture of how a large hotel brigade worked, with the base sauces standing ready on the stove all service and the finishing done to order.