No. 451

Colbert, English and Tarragon Sauces

Sauce a la Colbert, a l'Anglaise et a l'Estragon

Colbert.—Boil up one gill of meat glaze (No. 401) in a saucepan, remove it from the fire, and then incorporate into it four ounces of fresh butter, working them well together with an egg-whisk, until the butter is thoroughly melted; then add the juice of two lemons, some grated nutmeg, and two tablespoonfuls of good sherry wine; strain through a tammy, add a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and serve.

English.—Put a saucepan on the fire, containing two tablespoonfuls of Worcestershire sauce, and two of mushroom catsup, the same quantity of melted meat glaze (No. 401); take it off when it bubbles, then work slowly into it two ounces of anchovy butter, the juice of one lemon, and a little grated nutmeg; strain through a tammy and serve.

With Tarragon or Chervil.—Pour a gill of melted meat glaze (No. 401) into a saucepan; at the first boil take it off the fire, and whip in with it a quarter of a pound of butter divided into small pats; finish the sauce with the juice of two lemons, and half a spoonful of tarragon leaves, or else a spoonful of chervil leaves, one or the other finely cut up.

← No. 450 Clermont Sauce Hot Sauces No. 452 Crab Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Three variations on one idea: reduced meat glaze mounted with cold butter, sharpened with lemon. The hinge is temperature — the glaze must be off the heat before the butter goes in, or the emulsion breaks and you get a greasy pool.

A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. Each of these sauces yields roughly a cup once the butter is in, enough for four to six portions alongside grilled meat or fish.
Meat glaze (No. 401)Glace de viande: brown stock reduced until it is syrupy and sets firm when cold. A commercial demi-glace or reduced veal stock concentrate stands in; avoid bouillon cubes, which are salt-forward and will fight the four ounces of butter.
Butter, cold and in piecesButter, in pieces -- Only the tarragon version tells you to divide the butter "into small pats"; the others just say fresh butter. Dividing it and adding it a piece at a time off the heat is the safer approach for all three, since butter dumped in at once is likelier to separate.
TammyA tammy is a fine worsted cloth the sauce was wrung through. A fine-mesh conical strainer does the same work. In the Colbert the chopped parsley goes in after straining, not before; the tarragon version is not strained at all, and the herb is simply stirred in at the finish.
Anchovy butterFor the English sauce, mash two or three oil-packed anchovy fillets into two ounces of soft butter and chill it firm again before whisking it in. Anchovy paste from a tube works if you cut back — it is saltier than the fillets.
Mushroom catsupA thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquor, not tomato ketchup. It survives in Britain as mushroom ketchup; a spoonful of soy sauce with a little mushroom soaking liquid approximates the effect.
Two lemonsThe juice of two lemons is a lot against one gill of glaze. Start with the juice of one, taste against the salt in the glaze, and add more; the sauce should be pointed, not sour.
Holding the sauceNone of these will survive reheating. Keep them barely warm in a bain-marie below 140F and serve within twenty minutes or so — over direct heat the butter will oil out.

A Little History

Ranhofer's three sauces are all built on the same nineteenth-century French principle: a spoonful of concentrated meat glaze, whisked with butter and acid, produces a rich sauce in minutes without a roux. The Colbert is generally traced to the household of Louis XIV's finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, whose name attached to a family of glaze-and-butter preparations and to the split, breaded fish that is customarily served with them. The "English" version is a good record of what French chefs in America thought English cooking tasted of — Worcestershire, mushroom catsup and anchovy, all bottled condiments that Victorian kitchens kept on the shelf and used the way we use commercial stocks and pastes. That Ranhofer, presiding over Delmonico's in New York, felt obliged to codify an English sauce at all says something about the mixed clientele of a Gilded Age restaurant, where a French kitchen was expected to produce a beefsteak sauce as readily as a béarnaise.