No. 439

Bretonne Sauce

Sauce a la Bretonne

Mince up four ounces of onions, fry them in two ounces of clarified butter, and when fried without attaining a color, drain them and moisten with one gill of veal blond (No. 423); reduce and let fall to a glaze. Add one gill of veloute (No. 415) if for white, and espagnole (No. 414) if for brown; season with salt and pepper, and meat glaze; strain it forcibly through a sieve, and incorporate into the sauce just when ready to serve, half an ounce of fresh butter. For a lean sauce, moisten with some fish stock (No. 417), and lean veloute or espagnole (No. 416) and fish glaze (No. 399).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A short compound sauce from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built on the assumption that you already have stock, a mother sauce and meat glaze on hand. Read it as a formula rather than a standalone recipe.

The hinge: reduce to a glaze first"Reduce and let fall to a glaze" means cook the moistened onions until the liquid is nearly gone and coats the pan. Skip that and the finished sauce is thin and tastes of raw stock rather than sweet onion.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. The recipe calls for two, but the first is reduced away to a glaze before the second goes in, so the finished quantity is closer to half a cup.
Four ounces of onionsAbout one large or two small onions, finely minced. Sweat them in the clarified butter over low heat: Ranhofer is explicit that they must not color, since browning would push a Bretonne toward a soubise-gone-wrong.
Veal blondRanhofer's No. 423 is a pale veal stock. A light unsalted veal or chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will fight the white version.
Velouté and espagnoleTwo of the mother sauces of the period: velouté is a white roux loosened with pale stock, espagnole a brown roux with brown stock, usually with tomato. A modern cook can substitute a well-reduced stock lightly thickened with a beurre manié, accepting that the texture will be less silky.
Meat glazeGlace de viande -- stock reduced to a syrup. A teaspoon is plenty; commercial demi-glace concentrate or a good stock reduction does the same job. It is seasoning, not body, so add it after the salt and taste as you go.
Strain it forciblyPress the sauce through a fine sieve with a ladle so the onion pulp goes through and only the fibers stay behind. That pulp is what gives the sauce its texture; a blender achieves a similar result but a coarser one.
The final butterHalf an ounce, one tablespoon, whisked in off the heat immediately before serving. Once the butter is in, the sauce must not boil or it will break.
The lean versionThe fish-stock variant is a Friday and Lenten sauce, built on fish stock and the "lean" velouté or espagnole made without meat. It suits poached fish rather than the meats the ordinary version is usually paired with.

A Little History

Sauce à la Bretonne is one of the onion-based compounds of the classical French repertoire, and the name -- like most of the "à la" tags in nineteenth-century kitchens -- signals a regional association rather than a documented Breton origin; Brittany's reputation for onions and for haricot beans is generally offered as the explanation, and a garniture bretonne of white beans remains the standard partner for leg of lamb. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system, which is why this entry reads as a set of cross-references: the sauce is assembled from stocks and mother sauces standing ready on the stove, and it would have been finished to order in minutes. The pairing of a "white" and a "brown" version, plus a lean one for fast days, shows how a single formula was expected to serve a whole week of menus.