No. 407

Allemande Sauce

Sauce Allemande

Allemande sauce is made by reducing some veloute (No 415), incorporating a little good raw cream slowly into it. When the sauce is succulent and creamy thicken it with a thickening of several raw egg-yolks, then boil the sauce for one minute to cook the eggs, pressing against the bottom of the pan with a spatula, strain it through a tammy into a vessel. Stir it from time to time until cold.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you already have velouté on hand and gives no quantities at all, which is normal for a professional book of 1894. The proportions below are the standard ones for a liaison of this type.

The hinge: starch protects the yolksEgg yolks alone curdle well below boiling, but the flour in the velouté shields them, which is why the instruction to boil for one minute is not the error it looks like. Whisk constantly and count the minute; longer boiling still risks a grainy, broken sauce.
Proportions the text omitsA workable liaison for 1 quart of reduced velouté is 4 to 6 egg yolks whisked with about 1/2 cup heavy cream. Temper the mixture with a ladle of hot sauce before it goes into the pan.
"Raw cream"This means fresh, uncooked cream rather than scalded or cooked cream; in 1894 cream would in any case have been unpasteurised. Use pasteurized heavy cream at 36 percent or above; avoid ultra-pasteurized, which has a cooked note that shows in a sauce this plain.
Reducing the veloutéReduce by roughly a third before the cream goes in, then reduce again after. The sauce should coat a spoon heavily before the yolks are added, since the liaison thickens less than cooks expect.
Pressing with the spatulaThe instruction to press against the bottom of the pan means to keep the flat of the spatula moving over the whole base so nothing sets and scorches. A flat-edged wooden spatula beats a whisk here for exactly this reason.
TammyA tammy is a fine worsted cloth through which sauce was forced by two cooks twisting the ends. A conical chinois worked with a ladle, or a fine sieve lined with damp muslin, gives the same result.
CoolingStirring as it cools prevents both a skin and the accumulation of heat at the centre, which can carry the yolks past the point of setting. If holding it warm instead, keep it below a simmer in a bain-marie.
Yield and useUse -- It is a mother sauce for the book's blanquettes, poached chicken, sweetbreads and vol-au-vent fillings rather than something served on its own.

A Little History

Allemande, "German sauce," is one of the older names in the French repertoire and its origin is disputed rather than documented; it is generally explained as velouté enriched to a pale blond colour, though whether that has anything to do with Germany is anyone's guess. Carême treated it as one of the great sauces, and Charles Ranhofer, who cooked at Delmonico's in New York from the 1860s until the 1890s, inherited that classification directly. By the time Escoffier reorganized the system a generation later, allemande had been demoted from mother sauce to a derivative of velouté. The renaming of the yolk-and-cream liaison as sauce parisienne in some kitchens is commonly reported to date from the First World War and anti-German feeling, though the story is more often repeated than documented.