No. 413

Half-Glaze Sauce, Clear and Thickened

Sauce demi-glace Claire et liee

A half glaze sauce only differs from an espagnole by its lightness. This sauce is generally made in large quantities at the time, so as not to begin it so frequently, as it requires the utmost care in its preparation. Heat in a saucepan one pound of clarified butter, and when it is very hot fill it up with flour so as to obtain a paste rather too light than otherwise; thicken it well while stirring for a few minutes on the fire, and then set it aside in a warm part to cook and brown very slowly, without adhering to the bottom of the pan, and without letting it get black. Five or six hours after, pour it into a vessel, cover it with paper, and let this roux stand to get cool.

To make the Sauce: dilute the roux very slowly, with some beef stock (No. 194a), having it only slightly warm, and prepared for this purpose, and finish it exactly like the espagnole; it must be as clear as possible and of a light color; strain and skim it well. Stir the liquid over the fire to thicken the sauce, managing not to have any lumps in it, and should it not be perfectly smooth, then strain it through a fine colander. Put four ounces of butter in a saucepan, add to it four ounces each of sliced carrots, onions and celery root; the same quantity of lean ham cut in quarter inch squares, a bunch of parsley garnished with bay leaves, thyme and allspice, fry without coloring, pour the sauce over the whore, add four gills of good white, dry wine, and a quarter of a pound of mushroom parings, and let all boil while stirring, then remove it at once to the side of the range, and continue boiling on one side only, so as to be able to despumate it properly for several hours. Strain and put as much of this as is needed into a reducing saucepan with two gills of meat glaze (No. 401); boil, reduce it to the necessary degree, using a spatula to stir it from the bottom, without leaving it for one instant, incorporate slowly into it a little good veal blond (No. 423) and a small quantity of good white wine. When the sauce is succulent without being too thick, strain it through a tammy and pour it into a vessel, or else into a saucepan to keep warm in a bain-marie.

Clear Half-Glaze Thickened.—Have a quart of well-reduced clear gravy (No. 404); put it on the fire to boil, add six tablespoonfuls and skim it carefully, adding two tablespoonfuls of fecula, arrowroot, or cornstarch, diluted in a little cold water, pouring it slowly into the stock while stirring it with a whip; boil again, skim and strain through a fine sieve; set it in a bain-marie and cover the top with some Madeira wine.

← No. 412 Bechamel with Mushroom Essence Stocks, Essences & Auxiliaries No. 414 Brown, Espagnole or Spanish Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing the backbone of a nineteenth-century professional brown sauce system: a long-cooked brown roux, a vegetable and ham infusion, hours of skimming, then reduction with meat glaze. Almost nothing here needs changing except the scale, the vocabulary and a few timings that assumed a range with a permanent fire.

The hinge: brown the roux slowly and keep the stock coolThe roux is set aside in a warm place for five or six hours precisely so the flour toasts without scorching, and the beef stock is added only slightly warm to a cooled roux. A rough modern equivalent is a covered pot of roux in a low oven, stirred from time to time, for an hour or two, then cooled before the stock goes in. Adding hot stock to a hot roux makes lumps more likely.
Gills and poundsA gill is half a cup: four gills of white wine is 2 cups, two gills of meat glaze is 1 cup. The pound of clarified butter "filled up with flour" makes roughly 2 to 2.5 lb of roux, enough for several gallons of sauce; a quarter of that is plenty for a domestic batch.
Despumate, and boiling on one sideTo despumate is to lift off the fat and scum; Ranhofer's instruction to keep the pan boiling on one side only, pulled half off the heat, drives the scum toward the cooler side where it can be skimmed away. On a flat electric hob, set the pan half over the burner or use a low flame with the pot offset. Skim regularly; this is what makes the sauce clear rather than muddy.
Ingredients under old namesFecula means starch, usually potato starch. Veal blond is a pale, unbrowned veal stock. Mushroom parings are stems and peelings, saved for their flavor rather than their looks. "Lean ham" here means a mild European-style raw or lightly cured ham, not a sweet-cured supermarket ham; prosciutto ends or unsmoked bacon work in that role.
TammyA tammy is a fine woolen or linen straining cloth, wrung between two people. A chinois lined with a double layer of damp muslin does the same job.
An ambiguous line"Add six tablespoonfuls" in the thickened version has lost its noun somewhere between the kitchen and the type case, and the original does not say six tablespoonfuls of what. Madeira is the likeliest reading given the finish, but the text as printed cannot be resolved. "Pour the sauce over the whore" is a typesetting error for "the whole."
Starch quantitiesTwo tablespoons of potato starch or cornstarch to a quart of reduced gravy gives a light nappe. Slurry it in cold water, add it in a thin stream off a hard boil, and bring it back to a boil only briefly: potato starch and arrowroot thin out if held at a rolling boil, and cornstarch turns gluey.
The Madeira on topThe film of wine poured over the surface keeps a skin from forming while the sauce sits in the bain-marie. Stir it in when you use the sauce rather than pouring it off. A round of buttered parchment on the surface does the same thing without the wine.
Yield and keepingAs written this is a restaurant batch running to several gallons of base. Demi-glace freezes well; reduce it, pour into ice-cube trays, and use a cube or two to finish a pan sauce.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the French grande cuisine brigade system transplanted whole to Manhattan: a sauce that spans more than one working session, assumes a stockpot always on the fire, and exists only to be turned into a dozen other sauces. Demi-glace means literally "half glaze" — halfway between a liquid sauce and the sticky glace de viande that results from reducing stock to a syrup. Ranhofer defines it against espagnole, the older brown mother sauce, describing it simply as lighter; a generation later Escoffier fixed the standard formula as espagnole and brown stock in equal parts, reduced by half, and that is the definition most kitchens still teach. The distinction between the two versions given here is worth noting: the first is thickened by flour cooked into the sauce over hours, the second by a starch slurry stirred into an already-clear gravy at the last minute. The second is the direction restaurant cooking eventually went, and roux-thickened brown sauce is now the exception rather than the rule.