No. 422

Veloute Stock

Fond pour Veloute

Butter the bottom of a sixteen quart saucepan, having a thick bottom, cover it with sliced onions and on top of these lay four pounds of knuckle of veal and shoulder, half of each, four pounds of fowl without the breast, and moisten with one pint of remoistening (No. 189), put it on a brisk fire and cover the saucepan, as soon as the liquid is reduced to half, moderate the fire and let the sauce fall slowly to a glaze without browning, then moisten with six quarts more of white broth, skim off the fat and scum and season with salt, crushed whole peppers and a little sugar, add a bunch of parsley and celery green, garnished with two bay leaves and as much thyme, also half an ounce of basil, besides four ounces of mushroom parings or stalks and half a pound of minced carrots, then let cook for six hours, remove all the fat, add from time to time a little remoistening (No. 189), salt it to taste and strain through a sieve or a napkin. Use when needed.

← No. 421 Brown, Espagnole or Spanish Sauce Stock Stocks, Essences & Auxiliaries No. 423 Veal Blond Stock →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a foundation stock from the Delmonico's kitchen, built for a brigade working at volume: sixteen quarts of pot, ten pounds of meat, six hours of fire. It scales down cleanly by a quarter, and the technique matters more than the arithmetic.

The hinge: glaze without colorThe meat and onions are sweated down until the liquid reduces to a syrupy film on the pan bottom, and that film must stay blond. Any browning at this stage tints the finished velouté gray-beige and defeats the whole point of a white sauce base, so drop the heat the moment reduction is well underway and scrape the bottom with a wooden spoon.
"Remoistening" (No. 189)Ranhofer's remoistening is a thin working broth used for moistening pots and topping them up. A light white veal or chicken broth stands in for it, and plain water will do at the first pint if you have none.
White brothThe six quarts added after the glaze is a plain white stock from unroasted veal and chicken bones. Unsalted commercial chicken stock works, but it is already seasoned and often reduced, so hold back on salt until the very end.
Knuckle of veal and shoulderKnuckle is the shank with its joint, and it is there for gelatin; shoulder supplies flavor. Ask a butcher for sawn veal shank plus a piece of shoulder in equal weight. Veal shank is the one cut worth hunting down here, since nothing else gives the same body.
"Fowl without the breast"A mature stewing hen with the breast removed for another dish. Four pounds of chicken backs, wings, thighs and necks is the practical equivalent; a whole young broiler contributes far less.
Herbs and pepper, in modern termsHalf an ounce of basil is about 14 g; the recipe does not say whether fresh or dried is meant, and a generous handful of fresh leaves is a reasonable reading. Whole peppercorns simmered six hours can turn harsh, so some cooks prefer to crack them in during the last hour instead.
Straining and yield"Through a napkin" means a doubled layer of damp cheesecloth in a fine sieve, ladled in rather than poured, and never pressed. Expect roughly four quarts of finished stock from the six or seven quarts of liquid; chill it and the fat cap lifts off in one piece.
Sixteen quarts is not requiredQuarter everything and the recipe fits an 8-quart stockpot: 1 lb veal, 1 lb chicken parts, 1 1/2 quarts white broth, one bay leaf, a small handful of basil, 1 oz mushroom trimmings, 2 oz carrot. The six-hour simmer stays the same, at a bare tremble.

A Little History

Velouté is one of the sauces Carême set at the head of French sauce-making in the early nineteenth century, and the name simply means "velvety" — the finished sauce is this stock bound with a pale roux, in contrast to the brown espagnole that Ranhofer gives in the entry immediately before. The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's account of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its numbered cross-references — remoistening at No. 189, white broth elsewhere — show it was written as a working kitchen system rather than a book of standalone dishes. The insistence on gelatin from veal knuckle and on scrupulously avoiding color is characteristic of the period: before commercial stock bases, a restaurant's whole white-sauce repertoire rested on a pot like this one being started early and watched all day.