No. 486

Laguipierre Sauce

Sauce a la Laguipierre

Pour into a saucepan a quarter of a bottleful of white wine or champagne, add to it two ounces of chopped mushrooms, one tablespoonful of chopped and blanched shallots, half a clove of garlic, one bay leaf, six grains of allspice, eighteen grains of pepper, and let all these simmer together with two gills of veal blond (No. 423) for fifteen minutes, then add one pint of veloute (No. 415), and one gill of reduced mushroom essence (No. 392); thicken the sauce with four egg-yolks and one gill of cream, strain the whole through a tammy (No. 159), and then beat into it two ounces of fresh butter and the juice of one lemon.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic compound velouté finished with an egg-and-cream liaison, built on two other preparations from the same book. Read the cross-references first: without veal blond, velouté and mushroom essence on hand, there is nothing to make.

The hinge: the liaisonOnce the yolks and cream go in, the sauce must never boil. Hold it below about 180F, stirring, until it coats a spoon; a simmer will scramble the yolks and no amount of straining will bring the texture back.
Gills and bottlesA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so two gills of veal blond is one cup and a gill of cream or mushroom essence is half a cup. A quarter of a bottle of wine is roughly 6 fl oz.
GrainsA grain is an apothecary weight of about 65 mg, so eighteen grains of pepper is a bit over a gram, near half a teaspoon of peppercorns. Six grains of allspice is under half a gram, which suggests Ranhofer meant six berries rather than six grains by weight; either reading lands in the same place.
Veal blondNo. 423 is a light veal stock, cooked to a pale gold rather than a browned brown stock. An unsalted, lightly coloured veal or chicken stock stands in; avoid dark, heavily reduced demi-glace, which will bury the wine and mushroom.
Mushroom essenceNo. 392 is the strained, reduced cooking liquor of mushrooms. Simmering half a pound of sliced mushrooms in a cup of water or light stock and reducing it hard gives the same concentrated liquid.
TammyA tammy was a worsted cloth through which sauce was wrung by two people twisting a stick. A fine chinois pressed with a ladle, or a sieve lined with muslin, does the job.
Finishing butterBeat the butter in off the heat, a piece at a time, and add the lemon last. Reheating after the butter goes in will break the emulsion.
YieldRoughly a quart of finished sauce, enough for eight to ten portions of poached chicken, sweetbreads, veal or fish. It does not hold well; make it close to service and keep it warm in a bain-marie, never over direct heat.

A Little History

The name honours Laguipière, the great French chef of the Napoleonic era who cooked for Murat and died during the retreat from Russia in 1812. Carême, who regarded him as his master, praised him repeatedly in print and named dishes after him, and a sauce or garnish à la Laguipière passed from there into the standard repertoire that Charles Ranhofer inherited at Delmonico's. Its construction is entirely of that lineage: an aromatic wine reduction, a mother sauce (velouté), an essence for depth, then a yolk-and-cream liaison and a butter finish — the layered method that The Epicurean (1894) codifies across hundreds of numbered, cross-referenced sauces for a professional brigade that would have had stock, velouté and essence standing ready every day.