No. 480

Hunter's Sauce

Sauce au Chasseur

Put two ounces of butter into a saucepan, with two shallots cut in one-eighth inch dice; fry them a light golden color, and then moisten with one pint of espagnole (No. 414), and one pint of game stock; season, and boil on one side only, to despumate, then add half a bottle of Bordeaux, one ounce of cooked lean ham cut into small three-sixteenth inch squares, and two ounces of mushrooms. This sauce may be thickened with two gills of liquid game blood mixed with a tablespoonful of good vinegar; thicken it without boiling, strain the sauce through a tammy and serve.

← No. 479 Hugarian Sauce Hot Sauces No. 481 Huntress Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's chasseur is not the tomato-and-white-wine sauce of later hotel kitchens but a dark game sauce built on espagnole and finished, optionally, with blood. Almost everything here depends on two cross-referenced preparations and on one rule about heat.

The hinge: blood must never boilIf you finish with the blood liaison, the sauce is held well below a simmer and stirred until it thickens. A boil sets the proteins and the sauce breaks into dark grains that straining will not rescue. The tablespoon of vinegar is there to keep the blood from coagulating before it goes in.
Sourcing the bloodTwo gills is one cup of fresh liquid game blood, which is a byproduct of home butchery and is not sold in supermarkets. A specialist game dealer may supply it to order; otherwise omit it and let the espagnole carry the body. Do not substitute blood of unknown age or handling.
Espagnole and game stockNo. 414 is the classic brown sauce: brown roux moistened with brown stock and mirepoix, simmered and skimmed for hours. The game stock is made from the bones and trimmings of whatever you are serving the sauce with. Together they are the whole flavour of the dish; a shortcut base will not pass.
"Boil on one side only, to despumate"Set the saucepan half off the burner so the liquid convects to one side and pushes the scum and fat to the cool edge, where you skim it. Ranhofer uses this phrase repeatedly for brown sauces. Expect to skim for some time as the quart of espagnole and game stock reduces and clarifies.
Half a bottle of BordeauxAbout 12 fl oz, or 375 ml, of a dry red — a modest claret rather than anything you would drink on its own. Add it after the skimming and reduce again; the sauce should coat a spoon before the garnish and blood go in.
Gills and diceA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. The one-eighth inch shallot dice is a fine brunoise; the ham at three-sixteenths is slightly larger and meant to be visible in the finished sauce.
MushroomsTwo ounces, unspecified in the text; button mushrooms are the likeliest reading. Slice or dice them and add them near the end so they do not go grey and slack.
The tammyA tammy is a worsted straining cloth, worked by twisting between two people. A fine chinois lined with a doubled piece of muslin does the same job. Strain before adding the ham and mushroom garnish back, or the straining will remove it.
YieldRoughly a quart of finished sauce after reduction — enough for twelve to sixteen servings of roast or braised game. Halve it for a domestic dinner; it keeps a few days chilled, but a blood-finished sauce should be used the same day and reheated only gently.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that repertoire, which is why the book reads like a professional manual rather than a household cookbook: every sauce points at another sauce by number. Chasseur means hunter, and the name attaches to a whole family of preparations meant for game — the version most cooks know today, with white wine, tomato and tarragon, became standard through Escoffier and after. Ranhofer's is the older, darker line: red Bordeaux, game stock, and a liaison of the animal's own blood, the same thickening used in a civet of hare and generally traced to French country cooking, where nothing from a butchered animal was wasted. The blood is a working ingredient, not a flourish; it thickens, darkens and adds a faint iron sweetness that flour cannot imitate. That it appears matter-of-factly in a New York restaurant book of the 1890s says something about how much wild game still passed through American kitchens.