No. 446

Chateaubriand Sauce

Sauce Chateaubriand

Put into a saucepan one pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414), with two tablespoonfuls of meat glaze (No. 401), one pint of veal blond (No. 423), and reduce it all to half, then strain through a tammy, and just when ready to serve, stir in half a pound of fine butter, the strained juice of a lemon and a teaspoonful of chopped parsley. To make it with tarragon put into a saucepan two gills of dry white wine with some chopped shallots and mushroom peelings, and reduce it all to half. Mix in with it six tablespoonfuls of meat glaze (No. 401), and finish with three gills of reduced veloute (No. 415), let it boil for two minutes, then strain; at the last moment mingle in with it three ounces of butter in small pats, working it in well with a small tinned wire whisk; add the strained juice of a lemon and a few finely shreded tarragon leaves.

← No. 445 Champagne Sauce, Also with Chablis, Rhine Wi Hot Sauces No. 447 Cherry Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two versions of the same steak sauce: a plain one built on espagnole, and a tarragon one built on a shallot-and-wine reduction with velouté. Both are finished the same way, and that finish is where they succeed or fail.

The hinge: mount the butter off the heatThe butter goes in at the very last moment, in small pats, whisked into a sauce that is hot but no longer boiling. If it boils after the butter is in, the emulsion breaks and you get a greasy layer on top; the sauce also cannot be held long or reheated hard.
GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills of white wine is 1 cup, three gills of reduced velouté is 1½ cups.
Veal blondRanhofer's No. 423 is a pale veal stock, kept light rather than browned. An unsalted light veal or chicken stock stands in. Do not substitute anything salted: everything here is reduced by half, and salt concentrates with it.
Meat glazeGlace de viande, stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. Commercial demi-glace concentrates and glace pots sold in tubs are the nearest modern equivalent; a tablespoon is roughly a walnut-sized lump. Six tablespoons in the tarragon version is a lot of concentrated gelatin, and shop-bought versions are salty, so season only at the end.
TammyA tamis — a drum of fine woven cloth that the sauce was forced through with a wooden pestle or by two cooks twisting it. A fine chinois, or a conical strainer lined with a double layer of muslin, does the same work.
Mushroom peelingsTrimmings kept from other prep, used for aroma and then discarded at the straining. Stems and any scrappy caps do the job; there is no need to buy mushrooms for this.
Butter quantityHalf a pound into a pint of reduced sauce is period-correct richness and gives a heavy, glossy sauce. It can be cut back to 4–6 ounces without harming the texture, since the reduced stock supplies the body.
Whisk"A small tinned wire whisk" means tin-coated wire, which resists rust and reaction with acid; any small stainless whisk is fine.
Yield and servingThe first version reduces to roughly a pint of finished sauce. Both are intended for the châteaubriand cut.

A Little History

The sauce takes its name from the cut, and the cut is generally traced to the household of François-René de Chateaubriand, the writer and diplomat, whose cook is traditionally credited with the thick centre-cut fillet grilled between two lesser steaks that were then thrown away. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, printed The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system rather than a book of favourites, which is why this entry reads as a set of cross-references: espagnole at No. 414, velouté at No. 415, meat glaze at No. 401, veal blond at No. 423. A kitchen working from a book like this would have kept those preparations on hand, so that a "sauce" was largely a matter of combining them, reducing, and mounting with butter to order. The tarragon version, with its shallot and white wine reduction, is the one that survived into twentieth-century practice; Escoffier's later codification of châteaubriand sauce follows broadly the same line.