No. 432

Bavaroise Sauce

Sauce Bavaroise

Reduce to half its volume one gill of vinegar; take it from the fire and let get cold, then add one gill of bechamel (No. 409), four raw egg-yolks and four ounces of butter divided into small pats, a gill of water, salt and nutmeg. Stir the preparation over a moderate fire until it thickens, then incorporate into it three ounces of butter, a small bit at a time, working it in well with a whip so as to have it light, add to finish, three ounces of crawfish butter (No. 573) and a tablespoonful of grated horseradish.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A hot emulsified sauce built on egg yolks and butter, enriched with crawfish butter and sharpened with horseradish. It behaves like a hollandaise with a béchamel base, and it fails the same way hollandaise does.

Heat is the hinge"A moderate fire" here means gentle heat with constant whisking, ideally a bain-marie. The yolks set into a curdled mess above roughly 180F, and once broken this sauce will not easily come back.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. The recipe calls for a gill of vinegar reduced by half (so 2 fl oz of reduction), a gill of béchamel and a gill of water.
Total butterFour ounces worked in at the start, three ounces beaten in afterwards, then three ounces of crawfish butter: ten ounces in all, against four yolks. That is a rich ratio, and the second and third additions must go in slowly or the emulsion splits.
Béchamel No. 409Béchamel No. 409 -- Ranhofer's béchamel is a white roux moistened and simmered, then strained; béchamels of this period often carried veal stock alongside the milk. A plain milk béchamel works; keep it loose enough to pour, not stiff.
Crawfish butter No. 573Crawfish shells and trimmings pounded with butter, melted, strained and chilled. Any shellfish butter made from crawfish, shrimp or lobster shells serves the same purpose, which is colour and shellfish perfume. Add it off the heat so it does not break the sauce.
HorseradishFreshly grated root, stirred in at the very end. Its heat is volatile and cooks off within minutes; jarred horseradish in vinegar will also thin the sauce, so drain it if you use it.
Yield and serviceRoughly two to three cups. Sauces of this type were sent out with fish, and the horseradish would suit boiled beef, though Ranhofer gives no serving suggestion here.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the food he served during three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Sauce bavaroise belongs to the nineteenth-century French repertoire of hollandaise derivatives, and turns up in later codifications, including Escoffier's, in much the same form: an egg-and-butter sauce finished with crawfish butter and horseradish and sent out with fish. It should not be confused with the bavaroise of the period's drink lists, a hot sweetened milk-and-tea preparation. The béchamel and the crawfish butter are both numbered preparations kept ready elsewhere in the kitchen, and the sauce is assembled from them.