No. 404

Clear Gravy

Jus Clair

Butter the interior of a saucepan, cover the bottom with slices of onions, and lay on top some slices of unsmoked ham, add six pounds of split knuckle of veal, four pounds of beef and its bones, two pounds of parings of a roasted leg of mutton, with its bones broken, and four pounds of roasted chicken carcasses. Moisten with one quart of broth (No. 421), set it on the range, cover, and reduce on a moderate fire until the gravy becomes perfectly clear and falls to a glaze, remoisten with eight quarts of remoistening (No. 189), so that all the ingredients are covered, then boil, skim and season with salt, whole peppers, a bunch of parsley garnished with a bay leaf and as much thyme, a clove of garlic and four cloves, let the whole cook for four hours, then strain through a fine sieve, skim off the fat and reduce to half, and then clarify it with one pound each of veal and beef chopped up together. After the gravy is clear, strain it through a napkin and it is now ready for use.

A gravy may be made by remoistening espagnole sauce stock (No. 421), and adding to it some roast beef bones, chicken carcasses, etc.

← No. 403 Root Glaze Stocks, Essences & Auxiliaries No. 405 Thick Gravy →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a brown stock built on the classical French model, and Ranhofer's quantities are those of a hotel kitchen — roughly eighteen pounds of meat and bone yielding a few quarts of finished jus. Everything about it works at a quarter scale in a domestic pot.

The hinge: the first reductionThe quart of broth added at the start must cook down until it forms a sticky brown film on the bottom of the pan — what French kitchens describe as pincer les sucs, caramelising the juices. That caramelised glaze is where the colour and depth come from. Watch it closely at the end; if it blackens rather than browns, the whole gravy will be bitter and no amount of clarifying will fix it.
"Remoistening" (No. 189)This is the second-run liquid drawn from bones already used once for stock, standard in a large kitchen that never wasted anything. At home, use a light unsalted stock or plain water; water is closer to the spirit of the thing than a commercial concentrate, which will make the finished jus salty once reduced.
Unsmoked hamFresh ham, or an unsmoked gammon or raw prosciutto end. Smoked ham or bacon will dominate the finished gravy, which is meant to taste of veal and beef with the ham only in the background.
Scaling downQuarter everything: about 1.5 lb split veal knuckle, 1 lb beef with bones, half a pound of roast mutton trimmings and bones, and one roast chicken carcass, moistened first with a cup of broth and then with about 2 quarts of liquid. That fits an 8-quart stockpot.
Heat level for the four hoursA bare simmer, surface barely trembling, lid off or ajar. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and pulls fine particles into suspension, and a cloudy stock cannot be rescued at the clarification stage without losing flavour to the raft.
The clarificationThe pound each of chopped veal and beef is a raft: mix the cold minced meat into the cold, degreased, reduced stock, then bring it up slowly, stirring until it begins to set, and stop stirring. Hold at 180-190F for 30-45 minutes without boiling and ladle the clear liquid out through the side. Modern practice adds lightly beaten egg white to the mince, which makes the raft more forgiving.
"Strain through a napkin"A dampened linen napkin or several layers of rinsed cheesecloth set in a sieve. Dampening it first keeps the cloth from absorbing and holding back the stock.
Skimming the fatFar easier cold. Chill the strained stock overnight and lift the set fat off in a sheet before you reduce and clarify.
Yield and useThe quarter-scale version gives roughly 1 to 1.5 quarts of clear, lightly gelatinous jus. Season it thinly — it is a base for finishing roasts and glazing, and will be reduced further in use. It keeps three or four days refrigerated and freezes well in small blocks.

A Little History

Jus clair sits in the section of Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) devoted to the foundations from which everything else on a Delmonico's menu was assembled: a numbered system of stocks, glazes and sauces cross-referenced by number, so that a cook working the sauce station could find No. 421 or No. 189 without a word of explanation. The recipe shows the logic of a nineteenth-century brigade kitchen very clearly — nothing enters it new. The mutton is the parings and broken bones of a roast leg already served, the chicken is roasted carcasses already carved, and the moistening liquid is stock drawn a second time from spent bones. What comes out is a clear, unthickened meat essence, the ancestor of the reduced jus served alongside roasted meat today, and the counterpart to the No. 405 Thick Gravy that follows it. The clarification with raw chopped meat is the older method; egg-white raft clarification is now the usual teaching.