No. 430

Aurora Sauce, Fat and Lean

Sauce a l'Aurore, en Gras et en Maigre

For Fat.—Put into a saucepan half a pint of veloute (No. 415), with essence of mushrooms (No. 392), and half a pint of veal blond (No. 423); reduce to half, strain through a tammy, heat it up once more and when ready to serve incorporate two ounces of crawfish butter (No. 573) into the sauce.

For Lean.—Have in a saucepan one quart of bechamel sauce (No. 409); pound four hard boiled egg-yolks with four ounces of lobster butter (No. 580); press through a fine sieve, mix the two together adding the juice of a lemon, strain through a tammy and serve hot.

← No. 429 Argentine Sauce Hot Sauces No. 431 Barnave Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two versions of the same rose-colored sauce: one built on meat stock, one on milk and shellfish for fast days. Both live or die by how the compound butter is handled at the end.

Never let the butter boilCrawfish or lobster butter goes in off the heat, whisked into sauce that is hot but no longer simmering. Boiling breaks the emulsion and dulls the colour.
En gras and en maigre"For fat" and "for lean" are the old kitchen's meat-day and fast-day categories. The lean version substitutes milk-based bechamel for the veal-stock velout h sauce so it could be served on Fridays and through Lent.
Half a pintOne cup. The fat version therefore starts with about two cups of liquid and reduces to one; the lean version yields well over a quart.
TammyA tammy is a worsted or fine cloth strainer, wrung between two people to force sauce through. A fine chinois with a ladle pressed against it does the same job, and a doubled layer of muslin is closer still to the original texture.
Veal blondBlond de veau is a pale veal stock, reduced but not browned. A light, unroasted veal or chicken stock reduced to a glossy body substitutes; anything dark will tint the sauce brown and ruin the aurora color.
Shellfish buttersRanhofer's crawfish and lobster butters are made by pounding cooked shells and coral with butter, then clarifying. They are the coloring and the flavoring at once. Bottled shrimp paste or paprika butter is not the same thing, though shells from a previous meal, saved and frozen, make the real version practical.
The yolks in the lean versionFour hard-boiled yolks pounded with the butter and pressed through a sieve thicken the bechamel and warm its color. Work them to a smooth paste first; unpounded yolk fragments will not pass the tammy and will granulate the sauce.
ServingAurore goes with poached eggs, poached chicken or veal in the fat version, and with poached or steamed white fish and shellfish in the lean. Sauce at the last minute and serve immediately; it will not hold on a warmer without separating.

A Little History

Aurore is named for the dawn, and the name describes the color rather than any ingredient. Later French practice, codified by Escoffier, made sauce aurore a velout h or bechamel tinted with tomato pur he, and that is the version most cooks meet now. Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), written out of some thirty years at Delmonico's in New York, gives an older and more expensive reading: the rose comes from pounded crawfish or lobster shells worked into butter. The doubled fat-and-lean formula belongs to a professional kitchen still expected to feed observant Catholic diners on fast days, when meat stock was forbidden but shellfish was not.