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Venetian Sauce
Reduce for four minutes one tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar and chervil vinegar with half a dozen whole peppers, one ounce of lean cooked ham cut into small dice, six parsley roots, one sprig of thyme and one bay leaf. Strain it through a fine sieve into a bowl, moisten with one-half pint of veloute sauce, and finish with a dozen leaves of finely-chopped tarragon, two drops of spinach green and one teaspoonful of chopped parsley.
A classic French compound sauce built on velouté, given in the shorthand a hotel saucier would have understood. The whole thing hinges on the base sauce: velouté is a light stock (veal or chicken) thickened with a pale roux and simmered until it coats a spoon, and no amount of tarragon will rescue a thin or floury one.
- Half a pint of veloutéThat is one cup in US measure. Expect the finished sauce to yield a scant cup, enough for four servings of poached chicken, veal or fish.
- "Whole peppers"Whole black peppercorns, not chiles or peppers of any other kind. Six is right for a cup of sauce; they are strained out.
- The reduction is very smallThe recipe's "one tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar and chervil vinegar" most likely means a tablespoonful of each, though it can also be read as one tablespoonful of the two combined; either way, four minutes with the aromatics leaves little more than a syrupy spoonful. That is intentional. Use a small pan so it does not scorch, and pull it while there is still liquid to strain.
- Herb vinegarsTarragon vinegar is still sold; chervil vinegar essentially is not. Steep a handful of fresh chervil in white wine vinegar for a few days, or use tarragon vinegar for both and add extra fresh chervil at the end.
- Parsley rootsProbably the roots of ordinary parsley, saved from bunches, rather than the stubby parsley root (Hamburg parsley) sold as a vegetable, though the text does not say which. Parsley stems are a reasonable stand-in.
- Two drops of spinach greenA professional kitchen kept vert d'épinards, a concentrated green made by pressing raw spinach and setting the pigment over gentle heat. It is coloring only. A few drops of the juice from a blanched spinach leaf squeezed in a cloth does the same job; skip it and the sauce simply reads pale ivory rather than pale green.
- Finish off the heatAdd the chopped tarragon and parsley after the sauce has come off the flame. Held at a simmer, the herbs turn khaki and the tarragon loses its anise edge within a few minutes.
- Sieve, then seasonThe recipe strains the reduction into a bowl and adds the velouté to it; taste for salt at the end. The ham and the reduced vinegar both push the seasoning around more than the ingredient list suggests.
Venetian sauce (sauce vénitienne) is one of the small velouté derivatives codified in nineteenth-century French practice and carried into American hotel kitchens more or less intact; Escoffier gives a version of it, and the name is usually taken as a fanciful kitchen label rather than indicating any link to Venice. Its defining pair is tarragon and chervil, and it was served with poached fish, chicken and veal, where a white sauce with a sharp herbal lift was wanted. The two drops of spinach green point to a kitchen with colouring preparations already standing by, so a cook building sauces to order could tint one green rather than making a purée from scratch. That kind of pantry note is what marks these entries as working shorthand from a large kitchen rather than instructions written for a home cook.