No. 401

Meat Glaze, Clear

Glace de Viande Claire

Have a stockpot sufficiently large to contain four pounds of knuckle of veal, eight pounds of shoulder of veal, six pounds of shin or leg of beef, and add to these sixteen quarts of water and a very little salt; boil, skim, and garnish with a pound and a half of onions, one of them containing four cloves, two pounds of carrots cut in quarters, a bunch of eight medium sized leeks, with a few branches of celery, and a bouquet made of two ounces of parsley leaves, three bay leaves and as much thyme; bring to a boil, skim as fast as the fat and white particles rise to the surface, and boil in this manner for eight hours, then strain it through a sieve, and reduce down to two quarts. Put this into a tin can having a tube half an inch in diameter, a quarter of its height from the bottom, and plugged with a tight cork; cork well and tie it firmly down, then put it on to boil in water for one hour, remove it from the water, and keep it in a warm place for three days to settle, then take out the top, then the lower cork, and receive the glaze as it falls in an earthern vessel. This glaze should be very clear; suppress the bottom, and use it in sauces etc., or else add it to the spanish sauce stocks.

← No. 400 Clear half Glaze Stocks, Essences & Auxiliaries No. 402 Meat Glaze, Plain →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a professional-scale meat glaze from a hotel kitchen, and the clarifying method at the end is the part that cannot be reproduced. The stock itself is ordinary, but the finishing step — sealing two quarts of reduced meat stock in a tapped tin can and holding it in a warm place for three days — is an incubation, and no modern kitchen should attempt it.

Why the settling step failsA sealed, corked can of low-acid meat reduction held for three days at warm room temperature is close to ideal conditions for Clostridium botulinum, which grows without oxygen. The single hour in boiling water is a pasteurisation at best, not a canning process: it kills competing organisms while leaving spores intact to germinate during the warm hold, and the glaze is then drawn off and used in sauces without any further reliable heating.
Clostridium perfringens as wellMeat stocks held in the danger zone rather than chilled through it are a classic vehicle for C. perfringens. Even without botulism, three warm days of a protein-rich broth is a spoilage and illness risk.
The tapped canThe vessel described is a tin with a plugged drain tube a quarter of the way up, so the clear glaze could be drawn off above the settled sediment. Nothing like it is readily available now, and improvising one adds a contamination problem to the microbiological one.
ScaleEighteen pounds of veal and beef with sixteen quarts of water, reduced to two quarts, is a commercial stockpot's work; a domestic cook would have to scale it down sharply.
What glace de viande actually isThe name means simply reduced meat stock, taken far enough that it sets firm and glossy when cold. It is a flavour concentrate for sauces, not a dish, and current stock and demi-glace recipes cover the same ground with proper chilling and cold storage.
If you want clear glazeUse a modern recipe. The clarity Ranhofer is chasing came from patient settling; contemporary practice gets it by careful skimming, a raft or a fine strain, and refrigeration throughout.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised like a working kitchen rather than a household book, with its recipes running to hundreds of numbered entries. Glace de viande sat at the centre of that system, reduced until it set into a jelly that could sharpen a sauce with a spoonful. Ranhofer distinguishes a clear glaze from the plain one that follows it, and the tapped can with its lower cork is a piece of nineteenth-century kitchen ingenuity, letting the cook decant the bright glaze off the sediment without disturbing it. Refrigeration in commercial kitchens of the 1890s was ice-based and unevenly available, and a three-day settling at ambient warmth looks alarming now.