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Neapolitan Sauce
Reduce in a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of raw mirepoix with one-half ounce of butter; after five minutes moisten it with one-half pint of Madeira wine, one-half pint of Spanish sauce, two tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce and two tablespoonfuls of essence of game. Reduce for ten minutes and rub through a sieve.
This is a compound sauce in the classical French manner, built on two preparations the book assumes you already have on hand: espagnole and a reduced game stock. Read it as a finishing sauce for venison, hare or game birds, not as anything resembling the tomato sauce that now goes by the same name.
- Spanish sauceThis is sauce espagnole — brown stock thickened with a dark roux and flavoured with mirepoix and tomato, then reduced for hours. Nothing sold as "Spanish sauce" today is a substitute; a well-made demi-glace is the closest practical stand-in.
- Essence of gameGame stock reduced hard until it is intensely flavoured and nearly syrupy. Two tablespoons carry most of the sauce's character, so a weak substitute leaves you with sweetened demi-glace. Reduced venison or duck stock works.
- Raw mirepoixIn classical usage this means finely diced carrot, onion and celery, often with a little raw ham or bacon and a bay leaf and thyme, uncooked when it goes into the pan; the recipe itself does not spell out the composition. "Reduce" here means sweat it in the butter until it gives up its moisture and begins to colour.
- MeasuresHalf a pint is one cup; half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon. The total liquid is about two and a quarter cups before reduction.
- The MadeiraA cup of Madeira is a large proportion, and it is meant to lose its raw alcohol edge during the ten-minute reduction. Use a dry or medium-dry Madeira — a sweet one will push the finished sauce cloying, especially alongside the tomato.
- Reduction and strainingTen minutes at a steady simmer is a guide, not a rule; take it until the sauce coats a spoon lightly. Rubbing through a sieve is the point of the vegetables — they flavour the sauce and are then discarded, so press firmly and scrape the underside of the sieve.
- YieldRoughly three quarters of a cup to a cup after reduction and straining, enough for four to six portions of game. Finish off the heat with a knob of cold butter if you want gloss.
Sauce napolitaine belongs to the long catalogue of small brown sauces codified in nineteenth-century French kitchens, where a handful of mother sauces — espagnole above all — were spun into dozens of named derivatives distinguished by a wine, a garnish or an essence. Names like this one were often geographical gestures rather than statements of origin: the tomato nodded at the south, and the version Oscar Tschirky records is squarely Franco-American hotel cooking rather than anything an actual Neapolitan cook would recognise. The reliance on "essence of game" is itself a period marker. It presumes a kitchen with game trimmings and bones on hand to reduce, which is part of why so many of these classical sauces slipped out of use once the great hotel kitchens shrank.