No. 464

Financiere Sauce for Fat and for Lean and with Game and Chicken

Sauce a la Financiere en gras et en Maigre et au Gibier et a la Volaille

Put four ounces of butter in a saucepan, add four ounces of cooked lean ham cut in three-sixteenth inch squares, fry without coloring and then throw in four ounces of mushrooms or their parings, two bay leaves, as much thyme, one ounce of truffle parings and two gills of dry Madeira or sherry, let simmer and reduce over a slow fire. Moisten with one pint of veal blond (No. 423), and one pint of espagnole (No. 414), then let boil and despumate, adding a gill more Madeira, and when the suce is done, strain it through a tammy.

For Lean.-Replace the ham by smoked salmon or sturgeon, the sherry by sauterne, the veal blond by fish stock (No. 417), and use lean espagnole, and then finish the same as for the fat.

For Financiere Sauce with Game or Chicken.—Infuse in a quarter of a bottleful of warm white wine or champagne, two ounces of mushrooms and one of truffles. Place two ounces of butter in a saucepan with two ounces of finely minced raw ham, and when it is fried, drain off the butter and moisten with one pint either of chicken or game stock (No. 195), one pint of espagnole (No. 414), and the infused mushrooms and truffles; season with a dash of cayenne pepper, and let boil, skim and reduce it to a proper degree. Strain the sauce and keep it warm in a bain marie.

← No. 463 Fennel Sauce Hot Sauces No. 465 Finnoise Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stock pots already running; the sauce itself is straightforward once the two base liquids are in hand. Read the cross-references first, because they are most of the work.

The two components you must haveEspagnole (No. 414) is a brown roux-thickened veal stock, and veal blond (No. 423) is a pale, unthickened veal stock reduced to a light amber. Without both, this is not financière; a good commercial demi-glace plus unsalted veal or chicken stock is the nearest practical substitute.
Gills and ouncesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of Madeira is one cup and the extra gill later is a half cup. The ounces of ham, butter and mushrooms are weights, not volumes: four ounces is about 115 g.
DespumateIt means to skim persistently. Set the pan half off the burner so the simmer runs to one side; fat and albumin collect on the still side and can be lifted off with a ladle. This is what gives the finished sauce its clarity, and it cannot be rushed.
TammyA tammy cloth is a fine woollen or linen straining cloth, wrung between two people in a professional kitchen. A chinois lined with a doubled square of damp muslin does the same job.
Truffle paringsThese were the peelings left from turning truffles for garnish, a by-product in a nineteenth-century hotel kitchen and hard to come by now. A teaspoon of truffle from a jar, added with the wine, gets closer to the intent than truffle oil.
The wine goes in twiceThe first two gills are simmered and reduced with the ham and aromatics; a further gill goes in later, while the sauce boils and is skimmed. The second addition restores some of the wine character lost in the first reduction.
The lean versionThis is the meatless-day formula: smoked salmon or sturgeon for the ham, Sauternes for the sherry, fish stock for the veal. It is a genuinely different sauce, sweeter and more saline, and it wants a lighter hand with the reduction.
Salt lastHam, reduced stock and espagnole are all salty, and the sauce reduces further. The recipe itself calls for no salt; if you add any, do it after straining.
Yield and holdingTwo pints of liquid plus the wine will reduce appreciably, though the recipe does not say to what. Held in a bain-marie with a film of butter or a buttered paper on the surface it will keep an hour or two without skinning.

A Little History

Financière takes its name from the world of finance — the sauce, and the elaborate garniture of cockscombs, kidneys, truffles, quenelles and mushrooms that goes with it, were the sort of thing served to men who could afford them, and the name is generally read as a nineteenth-century joke about banker's food. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that kitchen, and the structure here is pure French codification: one master preparation, then variants for lean days, for game and for poultry, each swapping the fat and the stock while keeping the method identical. The lean version reflects the Catholic fasting calendar, which still shaped restaurant menus in Ranhofer's day. Truffle parings appearing as a routine flavouring says something about how Delmonico's was provisioned.