No. 479

Hugarian Sauce

Sauce a la Hongroise

Pour into a saucepan, the value of half a pint of tomato puree (No. 730) cooked plain, which means drained, but not thickened, also the same quantity of onion puree (No. 723), a gill of melted meat glaze (No. 401), and a pinch of paprika; let it all boil while stirring for two minutes, then remove it to the side of the range, and incorporate slowly into it, five ounces of butter, divided into small pats, without ceasing to stir.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A butter-mounted tomato sauce from Ranhofer's Delmonico kitchen, built on two purees and a spoonful of concentrated stock. The whole thing hinges on the butter going in off the heat.

The quantities"The value of half a pint" means a measured half pint, about 1 cup, of each puree, drained of excess liquid but not thickened. A gill is half a cup. Five ounces of butter is a stick and a quarter.
Meat glazeNo. 401 is glace de viande: brown stock reduced until it sets to a syrupy jelly. A tablespoon or two of commercial demi-glace concentrate loosened with hot water gives the equivalent depth; plain canned broth will not, since the point is concentration, not volume.
Onion pureeRanhofer's No. 723 is an onion puree of the soubise type, onions cooked soft and passed through a sieve, rather than anything caramelized. Sweat the onions gently without color, or the sauce turns brown and loses its point.
"Remove to the side of the range"A coal range had a cool zone at the edge. Read it as off the burner entirely, or on the lowest setting. The butter must melt into the sauce below a simmer.
Mounting the butterAdd the butter a pat at a time, stirring constantly, and never let the sauce boil again once it is in. Boiling breaks the emulsion and you get an oily slick over thin tomato. The sauce will not survive reheating either; hold it warm, not hot, and use it within the hour.
PaprikaUse Hungarian sweet paprika, and use it fresh. Old paprika is dusty and bitter, and a pinch of it will read as nothing at all. Bloom it in the sauce during the two-minute boil rather than adding it at the end.
SeasoningNo salt is listed; the meat glaze would bring some of its own. Taste before serving and correct with salt and a squeeze of lemon; tomato and onion purees both flatten under butter.
Yield and useAbout 2 1/2 cups. In the classical repertoire a sauce of this type went with veal, chicken, and poached or braised white meats.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its sauce chapter is essentially the French classical repertoire as it stood before Escoffier codified it. "A la hongroise" in that repertoire means paprika: Hungarian cooking reached French kitchens largely through that one spice. What Ranhofer describes here is a sauce montee au beurre, thickened by emulsified butter and by the gelatin in the meat glaze rather than by roux, a technique often presented as a modern lightening of classical sauce-making but visibly already in use at Delmonico's. The cross-references to numbered preparations, three of them in a paragraph, show how the book was meant to work: nothing is made from scratch at the point of service, and a sauce like this assumed a brigade with purees and glaze already standing on the range.