No. 436

Bordelaise Sauce, with Marrow and Maitre d'Hotel with Marrow

(Sauce Bordelaise, a la Moelle et Maitre d'Hotel a la Moelle).

Bordelaise Sauce.—Put into a saucepan half a bottleful of Bordeaux wine, adding a small garnished bouquet containing a little garlic, half a bay leaf, and two cloves; a quarter of a pound of the peelings and stalks of some chopped mushrooms, one tablespoonful of blanched shallots lightly fried in three spoonfuls of oil, one pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414), half a pint of veal blond (No. 423), and season with salt, mignonette and cayenne, boil, skim off the fat and then pour in half a bottleful of white wine, and when the sauce is reduced, strain it through a tammy and stir in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley; a pound of beef marrow cut in either squares or slices may be added to the bordelaise just when ready to serve. A simpler way is to brown some minced shallots in oil with a clove of crushed garlic, adding red wine and gravy, then reduce it to half, pour in the espagnole, boil, skim off the fat and serve.

Bordelaise Sauce with Marrow.—Fry minced shallots in oil with a clove of garlic (crushed); moisten with red wine and reduced gravy, add some espagnole; boil and despumate, then put in squares of beef marrow or else have them cut in slices and plunged into boiling water and drained; add only when ready to serve.

Maitre d'Hotel with Marrow.—Have some maitre d'hotel butter (No. 581), slightly melted, into which add four ounces of shallots for each pound of butter, the shallots being cut into one-eighth inch squares, eight tablespoonfuls of meat glaze or chicken glaze, and add just when ready to serve, slices of marrow previously thrown into boiling water and drained.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives three related preparations in one entry, all of them built on components made elsewhere in The Epicurean. The work is in the reduction and the strain; the marrow is added at the very last moment and never cooked in the sauce.

Marrow goes in at the endBeef marrow held in a simmering sauce melts into fat and the sauce breaks its gloss. Poach the slices or cubes in barely boiling salted water for about a minute until just set and still pink, drain, and drop them into the sauce as it goes to the table.
"Half a bottleful"Bordeaux bottles of the period held roughly three-quarters of a litre, so half is somewhere around 12 oz / 1.5 cups, though bottle capacity was not yet standardised. The recipe uses that much Bordeaux and then that much white wine again, which is unusual for a bordelaise and gives a lighter, sharper sauce than the modern red-wine-only version.
Espagnole and veal blondNo. 414 is the classic brown sauce of brown roux, brown stock and mirepoix; No. 423 is a light-coloured veal stock. A good reduced veal stock, lightly thickened, stands in for the espagnole; commercial demi-glace works if you cut it with water, as it is generally saltier than Ranhofer's.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked white or black peppercorns, not ground pepper. Add it late in the reduction so it perfumes rather than turns bitter.
Despumate, tammyTo despumate is simply to skim the grey scum and fat that rise as the sauce boils; keep the pot at a lazy boil on one side of the burner so the impurities collect on the cool side. A tammy was a woven cloth strainer, and a fine chinois or a sieve lined with damp muslin does the same job.
Sourcing marrowAsk for cut marrow bones and push the marrow out, or buy it already extracted. Soaking the bones in cold salted water for several hours draws out blood and keeps the marrow pale; a pound is a generous amount and serves a large platter of beef.
The maitre d'hotel variantNo. 581 is butter worked with parsley, lemon and seasoning. Here it is only softened, not melted to an oil, then loosened with meat glaze; it will split if it gets hot, so build it off the heat and spoon it over the meat rather than holding it warm.
YieldThe full bordelaise reduces to something around a quart, enough for a dozen or so servings. Halving it is straightforward, as the reduction is the only thing that scales awkwardly.

A Little History

Bordelaise takes its name from Bordeaux and, by convention, from its wine: a shallot-and-red-wine reduction finished into a brown sauce, served with grilled beef and crowned with poached marrow. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that restaurant's repertoire, which is why the entry reads as a set of cross-references rather than a standalone recipe — espagnole, veal blond and maitre d'hotel butter were all standing preparations kept ready in a professional kitchen. The marrow is the point of the dish. Nineteenth-century American and French cooking treated it as a delicacy rather than a scrap, and an entrecote a la bordelaise without its slices of poached marrow would have been considered incomplete. The second, shorter method Ranhofer offers is closer to what most kitchens serve today, and it is telling that he thought the elaborate double-wine version worth setting down first.