No. 405

Thick Gravy

Jus Lie

Cut into square pieces, six pounds of a shoulder of veal, put them into a saucepan with half a pound of melted lard to fry on a moderate fire, turning over repeatedly with a spoon; a quarter of an hour later put in one pound of cut up carrots and four ounces of onions; continue to fry the meats from twelve to fifteen minutes longer. Now moisten them with the value of one pint of remoistening (No. 189), cover the saucepan and let the liquid reduce until it has fallen to a glaze without allowing it to burn; moisten the meats again with eight quarts of hot broth and half a bottleful of white wine; skim the liquid at the first boil, then remove it to the side of the range and throw in a ham bone, a partly roasted chicken weighing four pounds, also a few chicken giblets, add a few whole spices and a bunch of parsley garnished with aromatic herbs. When the meats are about three-quarters done, skim the fat from the gravy and thicken with flour dissolved in cold water, two tablespoonfuls for each quart of liquid; continue to boil while skimming off more fat, and half an hour after, pour it through a sieve into another saucepan, let it come to a boil, then set it on one side of the fire to despumate for twenty-five minutes, stirring in at intervals a few spoonfuls of broth. Skim, remove the fat once more, and strain the gravy into a vessel leaving it to get cold, while stirring it from time to time.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's jus lié is a brown veal stock built on a fond, then lightly bound with flour — the house gravy that Delmonico's kitchen drew on all day. It is written at restaurant scale and assumes several other numbered preparations.

The hinge: build the glaze twiceThe hinge: reduce to a glaze -- The first moistening with a pint of liquid must be reduced all the way down to a sticky glaze on the pan bottom without scorching, then the eight quarts go in on top of it. That caramelized layer supplies much of the colour and depth of the finished gravy; a pale or burnt glaze is hard to correct later.
"Remoistening" (No. 189)In The Epicurean this is the reserved second-run liquid from earlier stockpots — a thin, already-savoury broth kept for exactly this purpose. Ordinary light stock or the liquid from a previous batch does the same job; water gives a thinner result.
Scale and yieldScale -- Eight quarts of broth plus wine over six pounds of veal, a four-pound chicken and a ham bone. The recipe states no finished yield, and how much you end with depends entirely on how hard it simmers and how much is skimmed away. Scaling down means keeping the ratios, but expect a small pot to reduce faster.
"Half a bottleful of white wine"Period bottles were not standardised, but most fall in the 700-800 ml range, so half a bottle is somewhere near 12 ounces, or 1½ cups. Use something dry and unoaked.
DespumatingThe pan is set to one side of the fire so it barely simmers rather than boiling; the traditional explanation is that fat and scum collect on the cooler side where they can be lifted off. The recipe calls for a few spoonfuls of broth stirred in at intervals, without specifying temperature. Twenty-five minutes of this is what gives a clean-tasting, well-skimmed gravy — though a flour-bound jus will never be as limpid as a consommé.
The bindingTwo tablespoons of flour per quart, slaked in cold water and stirred in, gives a light nappe — not a sauce thick enough to coat a spoon heavily. The recipe stirs the slurry into the cooking liquid and keeps it boiling, straining half an hour later; that continued cooking is what keeps the flour from tasting raw.
Half a pound of lardThe recipe calls for melted lard. Clarified butter, beef dripping or a neutral oil all brown the veal adequately; the quantity is generous for six pounds of meat and can be cut back, since a good deal of it is skimmed off again.
"Whole spices"Ranhofer does not say which. Peppercorns, a clove or two and a blade of mace would suit a brown stock of this kind; restraint matters either way, since the gravy is a base for other sauces.
Cooling and keepingStirring as it cools keeps a skin from forming and helps it cool evenly. Whatever the intention, cool it fast in a shallow pan or over ice rather than leaving a large potful to stand; refrigerate within a couple of hours and use within three or four days, or freeze in portions.

A Little History

Jus lié — literally "bound juice" — sits between an unthickened roast gravy and a full espagnole: the same long-simmered brown veal foundation, but tightened with a flour slurry rather than a cooked roux, so it stays lighter in colour and cleaner in flavour. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the Delmonico's kitchens in New York for over thirty years and published The Epicurean in 1894, numbered his auxiliaries so that a cook could be sent from one entry to the next; the cross-reference to No. 189 here reflects a brigade kitchen where nothing was made from scratch that could be built from yesterday's second-run stock. The ham bone, the giblets and the partly roasted chicken are all economy as much as seasoning — a professional larder feeding its trimmings back into the sauce pot. The repeated skimming and the despumating stage belong to a house where labour was cheap and a cloudy sauce was a visible failure.