No. 408

Allemande Sauce with Mushroom Essence

Sauce Allemade a l'Essence de Champignons

After the veloute (No. 415) sauce is reduced in a flat saucepan with a fifth part of mushroom essence (No. 392), thicken with twelve egg-yolks, some nutmeg and two ounces of butter, incorporate slowly a part of the sauce into the thickening, then pour the whole into the sauce, adding the juice of one lemon. Set the saucepan on the fire, stir at the bottom with a spatula, boil the sauce for one minute, then strain through a tammy; pour it in a high saucepan and set it in a bain-marie, and cover it with a little white stock (No. 422) to prevent the surface from drying or set it away in a vessel for further use.

← No. 407 Allemande Sauce Stocks, Essences & Auxiliaries No. 409 Bechamel Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade working from a stockpot, so quantities are given as proportions rather than a fixed yield. Read the twelve yolks as a signal of scale: this is several quarts of velouté, and the whole thing is a component, not a dish.

The hinge: temper, then one minute onlyThe yolks are slackened with a ladle of hot sauce before the mixture goes back into the pan, and the finished sauce is boiled for one minute. The starch in the velouté protects the yolks from breaking, but prolonged boiling risks the egg tightening and the sauce going grainy. Stir at the bottom with a flat spatula the whole time, as Ranhofer directs.
Scale it downFor a household batch, work at roughly one yolk plus a scant teaspoon of butter per cup of velouté (the recipe's two ounces of butter to twelve yolks works out at about a teaspoon each), with a fifth of that volume in mushroom essence and lemon juice to taste. Ranhofer gives no yield, but twelve yolks suggests a batch of some quarts rather than a pint.
Mushroom essenceNo. 392 is a mushroom essence: mushroom liquor reduced to a concentrate, not a broth. If you are not making it, simmer 8 oz of chopped mushrooms in a cup of white stock until reduced by three-quarters, press hard through a sieve, and use that.
Velouté, not béchamelNo. 415 is a white roux moistened with veal or chicken stock and skimmed at length. Allemande is velouté finished with yolks and lemon; substituting a milk-based sauce gives you something else entirely.
Tammy clothA tammy is a worsted straining cloth, twisted between two people to force the sauce through. A fine chinois with a ladle, or a conical sieve lined with damp muslin, does the same job.
"A flat saucepan" and "a high saucepan"The wide pan is for fast reduction of the velouté; the tall narrow one minimises the surface exposed to air during holding. The distinction is deliberate and worth keeping.
The film of stockFloating a little white stock on the surface is the period alternative to buttering or filming with plastic. Ranhofer gives it only to keep the surface from drying; in practice it is generally stirred back in on reheating.
HoldingA bain-marie here means a covered pan standing in hot, not boiling, water. Held too hot, the yolks go on setting and the sauce can break over a long service.

A Little History

Allemande — "German sauce" — was one of the four grand sauces of the classical French repertoire before Escoffier demoted it, treating it as a derivative of velouté rather than a mother sauce in its own right. Its name has never been convincingly explained; it is generally traced to the pale colour, and the sauce was at times renamed sauce parisienne out of national feeling. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system: this entry is one of a long run of numbered variations on velouté, each cross-referenced to the stocks and essences that feed it. The mushroom essence version was used with poached poultry, sweetbreads and vol-au-vent fillings, where a plain velouté would have tasted flat and a brown sauce would have spoiled the colour.