No. 484

Italian Sauce

Sauce a l'Italienne

Place a tablespoonful of olive oil and two ounces of butter in a saucepan with two ounces of onions, and four shallots, all chopped up; a bunch of parsley garnished with a bay leaf and the same quantity of thyme, two cloves and one clove of garlic, two ounces of ham cut in squares, fry all these without letting them attain color, add a quarter of a pound of chopped mushrooms; moisten with one gill of white wine and three gills of veal blond (No. 423), salt, red pepper and nutmeg to season, add a quart of espagnole (No. 414), or veloute (No. 415), skim off and reduce the sauce; suppress the parsley, just when ready to serve add the juice of a lemon and a teaspoonful of chopped parsley. For Italian sauce with truffles add two ounces of chopped truffles.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic duxelles-based brown sauce from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), written for a kitchen that already had gallons of mother sauce standing by. The work is in the aromatic base; everything else is stock-cupboard logistics.

The hinge: sweat, do not brown"Fry all these without letting them attain color" is the whole character of the sauce. Onion, shallot and ham should go translucent and soft over gentle heat; any real browning turns this from an Italienne into a generic brown sauce.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. So one gill of white wine is 1/2 cup, and three gills of veal blond is 1 1/2 cups.
Veal blondRanhofer's No. 423 is a light-coloured veal stock. A good unsalted veal or light chicken stock stands in; avoid dark roasted stock, which will overwhelm the mushrooms.
Espagnole or velouteA quart of finished mother sauce, made ahead. Espagnole gives the dark version, veloute the pale one. If you are not keeping either on hand, the honest substitute is a quart of well-reduced brown or white stock lightly bound with a roux, made before you start.
Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not sweet peppers. A pinch — it is there for lift, not heat.
"Suppress the parsley"A literal rendering of the French: remove and discard the bouquet of parsley, bay and thyme before finishing. The cloves and the garlic clove go with it if you tied them in.
Skim and reduceKeep the pan slightly off-centre on the burner so the fat and scum collect on one side, and skim repeatedly. Reduce until the sauce coats a spoon.
Finish off the heatLemon juice and raw chopped parsley go in at the last moment. Boiling after the lemon dulls both the acidity and the green flavour.
YieldRoughly a quart of finished sauce — enough for twelve to sixteen servings over veal, chicken, brains or sweetbreads. It keeps several days refrigerated and reheats gently.

A Little History

Despite the name, sauce a l'Italienne is a French classical preparation: a mushroom-and-ham base — essentially a duxelles enriched with shallot and lean ham — folded into espagnole or veloute and sharpened with lemon at the last. Why it carries the Italian label is not settled, and the sauce was established in the French repertoire before Charles Ranhofer set it down here. Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, built The Epicurean as a cross-referenced system: this entry cannot be cooked without turning back to No. 414, No. 415 and No. 423. In a kitchen of that scale the mother sauces were made in quantity and the small sauces spun off them to order, so a recipe calling for a full quart of espagnole was not extravagant.