No. 476

Ham Sauce and Harlequin Sauce

Sauce au Jambon et a l'Arlequin

Ham Sauce.—Place in a saucepan on the fire two ounces of butter, add to it two ounces of lean ham either scraped or finely chopped, and then fry it without letting it attain color, and moisten with a pint of cream; reduce and add one pint of bechamel (No. 409); boil it again and thicken the sauce with six raw egg-yolks and half a pint more cream; and just when ready to serve throw in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley.

Harlequin Sauce.—Heat three ounces of butter in a saucepan, add half a pound of raw ham cut in three-sixteenth inch squares; fry without coloring, drain off the butter, take out the ham and detach the glaze with a little broth, adding four gills of espagnole sauce (No. 414), two of champagne, and two of veal blond (No. 423); reduce and despumate; strain through a tammy, add the ham, four ounces of gherkins cut in three-sixteenth inch squares, and four ounces of egg-white cut the same; also four ounces of carrots cut in same size squares, blanched and cooked in consomme with a little sugar, four ounces of cooked truffles cut the same as the carrots, and a heavy pinch of blanched parsley leaves.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Two sauces from Ranhofer's brown-and-white pairs: one an enriched cream sauce, one a garnished brown sauce built on espagnole. Both assume a professional kitchen with mother sauces and stocks already standing, and both are written in quantities meant for a banquet.

The hinge: the yolks must not boilSix yolks slaked with half a pint of cream go into the ham sauce off the boil, and it must not simmer again. Take the pan from the heat, stir the yolk-cream in, and return it only to the gentlest heat until it coats a spoon at around 175-180F. Any bubble and you have sweet ham-flavoured scrambled egg.
Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so four gills of espagnole is 2 cups, two of champagne is 1 cup, and two of veal blond another cup. The ham sauce uses a pint of cream, a pint of bechamel, then a further half pint of cream — three cups of cream in all, on top of the pint of bechamel.
"Raw ham"Ranhofer most likely means ham that is cured but not cooked; a prosciutto, speck or country ham suits. For the ham sauce, lean scraped prosciutto works; for the harlequin, dice it small and fry gently so it renders without browning, since colour here would muddy the finish.
Despumate and tammyTo despumate is to skim the scum and fat that rise as the sauce reduces; do it repeatedly rather than once. A tammy was a worsted straining cloth wrung between two people — a fine chinois lined with muslin does the same job.
The garnish is the pointEverything in the harlequin is cut to the same 3/16-inch dice: ham, gherkin, hard-boiled egg white, carrot glazed in consomme with a little sugar, and truffle. Uniformity is the whole effect, so cut carefully and add the dice to the strained, finished sauce off the heat so it stays distinct.
TrufflesFour ounces of cooked truffle is beyond most budgets now. Cooked black truffle is the intended flavour; if you substitute, a firm dark mushroom keeps the colour contrast but not the perfume, and that is a real loss rather than an even trade.
Espagnole, béchamel, veal blondNumbers 409, 414 and 423 in the book. Espagnole is a brown veal-stock sauce thickened with brown roux and mirepoix; veal blond is a pale, lightly reduced veal stock. A good demi-glace stands in for the espagnole, and unsalted veal or chicken stock for the blond — but reduce your own salt accordingly, since cured ham and reduction both concentrate it.
ServingThe ham sauce belongs with poached poultry, sweetbreads or veal; the harlequin, with braised or roasted meats where the diced garnish reads as part of the dish. Both are served hot and neither reheats well — the yolk sauce will break, and the garnish softens.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how that kitchen worked: a numbered sauce is rarely made from scratch but assembled from mother sauces held in the larder — béchamel here, espagnole there — then pushed in one direction with a flavouring and a garnish. The name arlequin refers to Harlequin's motley costume, the patchwork of coloured diamonds worn by the commedia dell'arte character, and it was applied in nineteenth-century French cooking to any preparation whose look came from several distinctly coloured elements set against each other; the pink ham, green gherkin and parsley, white egg, orange carrot and black truffle are the motley. Cutting garnishes to a fixed dimension in this way belongs to the tradition of the salpicon, and the champagne in the reduction is a mark of the same period's taste for signalling luxury in the ingredient list itself. The two sauces stand under one number, the same flavouring, ham, worked once into a white sauce and once into a brown.