No. 415

Veloute Sauce

Sauce Veloutee

The veloute like the espagnole is also a leading sauce used for making secondary sauces. Melt three-fourths of a pound of butter in a small saucepan; stir into it three-fourths of a pound of good flour, and let the roux cook for a few minutes, then set the saucepan on a slower fire without letting it color; in order to obtain a well thickened sauce, the flour must be well cooked. When the roux is sufficiently done dilute it gradually with four quarts of good stock (No. 423). In case there be no special stock prepared for this sauce then use some good clear chicken stock (No. 195). Stir the liquid over the fire until it comes to a boil, then move it aside to let it cook on one side only; despumate the sauce for one hour, skimming off all the white particles arising to the surface; remove all the fat, and strain the veloute through a sieve into a vessel and let it get cool while lifting off the scum that forms on the top.

← No. 414 Brown, Espagnole or Spanish Sauce Stocks, Essences & Auxiliaries No. 416 Veloute and Brown, Espagnole or Spanish Sauc →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic white mother sauce built on a blond roux and white stock, written for a restaurant kitchen turning out gallons at a time. The technique scales down cleanly if you keep the proportions and, above all, the long lazy simmer.

The hinge: cook off-center and skim"Cook on one side only" means setting the pan so that only part of the base sits over the heat. The convection current drives scum, fat and loose starch to the cool side, where you lift them off. Centering the pan on a burner defeats the whole method and you will strain out cloudy sauce.
DespumateAn older kitchen word for exactly that skimming: the hour of gentle simmering and repeated removal of the white foam is what takes the raw-flour taste out and makes the sauce glossy rather than pasty. It is not optional time.
Scale it downQuarter the recipe and you get 3 oz (85 g) butter, 3 oz (85 g) flour and 1 quart (about 1 liter) of stock. Ranhofer gives no yield; expect to lose some volume over the hour of simmering and skimming.
Blond, not brownCook the roux a few minutes until it loses its raw edge, then move it to a slower fire; Ranhofer's instruction is to cook it well 'without letting it color'.
The stockNo. 423 is the special stock Ranhofer prepares for this sauce; No. 195, his fallback, is clear chicken stock. Use an unsalted or lightly salted homemade white stock. Commercial broth is usually salted and will concentrate over an hour of reduction into something inedible.
Flour then and now'Good flour' is not further specified in the text. Modern all-purpose works; bread flour thickens slightly less per ounce and can turn stringy. Weigh rather than measure by cup.
StrainingA fine sieve is the minimum; a chinois lined with damp muslin gives the texture the sauce is meant to have.
Cooling and keepingA large volume of stock-based sauce sits in the danger zone for hours if left on the counter. Cool it fast in a shallow pan or an ice bath, then refrigerate. It keeps three or four days and freezes well; skim the last of the fat off the chilled surface before reheating.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the way a great American restaurant of the period cooked, and its structure follows French practice: a small number of leading or mother sauces from which dozens of secondary sauces are drawn. Veloute -- from velours, velvet, for the texture a properly despumated sauce takes on -- is the white counterpart to the espagnole in the entry immediately preceding this one, and the two together underpin much of the book's sauce chapter. The scale tells you what kind of kitchen this is: four quarts made at once, held cool, and drawn on all service long. Careme had codified the leading sauces earlier in the century, and Escoffier would rework the list in Le Guide Culinaire in 1903, moving away from the long despumation in favor of faster stocks; this version, with its hour of skimming over a fire banked to one side, belongs to the older and more laborious style: it is a coal-range method, written before thermostatic control made even heat the default.