No. 424

African Sauce

Sauce a l'Africaine

Put two ounces of butter into a sautoire and when hot add two ounces of chopped up onions and fry without coloring; moisten with a pint of broth and a pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414), add a small bunch of parsley garnished with half a bay leaf and as much thyme. Bring the whole to a boil, skim, remove the fat and let cook for half an hour; strain through a tammy and incorporate slowly into the sauce, two ounces of butter, a pinch of cayenne and the juice of a lemon, also a gill of Madeira wine and two ounces of exceedingly fine cut up truffles.

← No. 423 Veal Blond Stock Hot Sauces No. 425 Allemande with Red Wine and Fruits →

For the Modern Kitchen

A compound brown sauce from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), built on the classic espagnole. Everything hinges on the finish: the butter, lemon, Madeira and truffles go in off the heat, and the sauce must not boil again or it will break and lose the wine's aroma.

Espagnole (No. 414)The base is a brown sauce of brown roux, veal or beef stock and mirepoix, simmered and skimmed for hours. A well-reduced brown veal stock thickened lightly, or a good demi-glace let down with stock, stands in for it; commercial gravy will taste flat against the Madeira.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. That is a generous quantity of Madeira for a pint-and-a-pint sauce, so use a dry Sercial or Verdelho rather than a sweet cooking Madeira.
Sautoire and tammyA sautoire is a straight-sided sauté pan, wide enough that the sauce reduces as it simmers. A tammy is a worsted straining cloth wrung between two people; a fine chinois lined with a doubled layer of muslin does the same work.
SkimmingThe recipe has you skim and remove the fat after the first boil, then cook for half an hour, which both cooks out the aromatics and gives any remaining fat and scum time to rise. Keeping the sauce at a bare tremble on one edge of the burner rather than a full boil makes the skin easier to lift off.
Mounting the butterThe second two ounces of butter are 'incorporated slowly'; taking the pan off the fire and adding the butter cold and in pieces is the surest way to keep the emulsion together, since too much heat will split it and turn the sauce greasy.
TrufflesThe recipe asks only for 'exceedingly fine cut up truffles', presumably black truffle, cut in a very fine julienne or brunoise and added at the finish so the perfume survives; kitchens of this period frequently used preserved truffles. Preserved truffle in its own juice is the honest substitute; truffle oil is not, and will fight the Madeira.
CayenneA pinch means a pinch; it is the only obvious heat added at the finish, and the name is usually taken to refer to that, though this is supposition rather than anything Ranhofer states.
YieldAbout a pint and a half after reduction and straining, enough to sauce eight to ten portions of beef fillet, tournedos, or roast game.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, arranged The Epicurean as a numbered system in the French manner, with the great mother sauces first and dozens of derivative sauces branching from them; No. 424 hangs off the espagnole at No. 414. Names like "à l'africaine" in nineteenth-century French kitchens generally signalled little more than a pointed note of cayenne, sometimes tomato, and rarely had any documented connection with African cooking, the same loose geographic labelling that produced sauces "à l'indienne" and "à la portugaise". What the recipe does show plainly is the economy of a large professional brigade: with a stockpot and a batch of espagnole standing ready, a distinct sauce could be finished in forty minutes, and the truffle and Madeira at the end mark it as a dish for the carriage trade Delmonico's served.