No. 450

Clermont Sauce

Sauce a la Clermont

Cut six medium onions in two; then remove the stalk and root from both ends giving a sharp slanting blow with the knife, so when they are removed the onions easily fall apart; then mince them up finely. Put four ounces of butter into a saucepan on the fire, and when it is hot, add the onions, and fry them slowly so that they become a nice golden color, then drain off the butter, and finish cooking with a quart of remoistening (No. 189); season with salt, pepper, and sugar, and when the onions are well done, and the stock reduced to half, add to it a pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414) with two tablespoonfuls of meat glaze (No. 401); season nicely and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classical onion sauce built on two of Ranhofer's base preparations, so the work is mostly in the cross-references. Everything hinges on how far you take the onions in the butter.

The hinge: colour, not charThe onions want a slow golden-brown all the way through, which takes 25-40 minutes over medium-low heat. Rushed browning gives scorched edges and raw centres, and the bitterness carries straight into the finished sauce.
"Remoistening" (No. 189)Ranhofer's mouillement is a light brown stock used to moisten braises. A good unsalted brown veal or beef stock stands in; a quart reduced to a pint is the target.
Espagnole (No. 414)The classical brown mother sauce: brown roux, brown stock, mirepoix and tomato, simmered and skimmed for hours. A pint of good demi-glace, loosened slightly, is the practical modern substitute.
Meat glaze (No. 401)Glace de viande, stock reduced to a syrupy, tacky glaze. Two tablespoons is a lot of concentrated flavour, so hold back on seasoning until it has gone in and dissolved.
Draining the butterFour ounces (115 g, one stick) is a frying medium here, not an enrichment. Pouring most of it off before the stock goes in keeps the finished sauce from breaking into a greasy layer.
The sugarA pinch only, perhaps half a teaspoon, to help the onions colour and to balance the acidity of the espagnole. This is not a sweet sauce.
Texture and strainingRanhofer never strains: the minced onion stays in the sauce. If you want a smooth sauce, blend and pass it through a chinois rather than straining out the onions you spent half an hour cooking.
YieldRoughly a quart of finished sauce (a pint of reduced stock plus a pint of espagnole), enough for eight to ten servings or more with beef, tongue, or braised meats.

A Little History

In the classical French repertoire the name Clermont attaches almost invariably to onions: garnishes of stuffed braised onions, onion purées, and sauces like this one, the label generally traced to the French place-name and the noble house associated with it rather than to any documented cook. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system, which is why this entry reads more like a node in a network than a standalone recipe: it draws on a moistening stock, an espagnole, and a meat glaze, each with its own number elsewhere in the book. That structure is the Carême logic of mother sauces and small sauces, transplanted to an American kitchen that could afford the brigade needed to keep all those bases going at once. The sugar and the long slow browning point to the same instinct behind French onion soup: coax sweetness out of the onion first, and the brown stock has something to hold on to.