No. 491

Lyonnese Sauce with Tarragon

Sauce Lyonnaise a l'Estragon

Cut up eight ounces of onions into three-sixteenth inch squares; blanch, then drain and fry them in two gills of oil or else six ounces of butter; when nearly done, put them into a saucepan with one pint of veal blond (No. 423), one pint of espagnole (No. 414) or veloute sauce (No. 415), and one tablespoonful of meat glaze (No. 401); reduce it, then add the juice of a lemon, some nutmeg, and mignonette. Strain the sauce through a tammy (No. 159), then incorporate into it four ounces of butter and a teaspoonful of tarragon leaves finely shredded and blanched.

← No. 490 Sauce a la Lucullus Hot Sauces No. 492 Madeira Sauce, or Sherry, Marsala, Etc →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic compound brown sauce built on two base preparations from elsewhere in the book. Everything hinges on the finish: the butter goes in off the heat, after the sauce is strained, and the sauce must not boil again once it does.

The measurementsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of oil is one cup — a great deal of fat for eight ounces of onion; the six ounces of butter given as the alternative is somewhat less fat, though still generous. The recipe does not specify the heat, but the quantity of fat points to shallow frying rather than deep-frying.
Veal blondRanhofer's blond de veau is a pale veal stock, simmered from bones and trimmings and kept light in colour rather than deeply browned. A good unsalted veal stock stands in; chicken stock will do at the cost of body.
Espagnole or veloutéEspagnole is the brown mother sauce — brown roux, brown stock, mirepoix and tomato, long-simmered and skimmed. Velouté is the pale version, white roux and white stock. Choose one; the sauce is darker and heavier with espagnole, lighter with velouté.
Meat glazeGlace de viande, stock reduced until it sets to a syrupy jelly. A tablespoon of commercial demi-glace concentrate is the practical substitute, but it is usually salted, so hold back on any other seasoning until the reduction is finished.
MignonetteNot the flower and not shallot vinegar. In this book mignonette means coarsely cracked white peppercorns, added late so the perfume survives.
The tammyA tammy is a worsted cloth through which sauce was forced with two people twisting a stick. A fine chinois, pressed hard, or a conical strainer lined with a double layer of rinsed cheesecloth, gives the same result. Everything solid is left behind — the onions are flavouring, not garnish.
Mounting the butterTake the strained sauce off direct heat, let it stop bubbling, then whisk in the four ounces of cold butter a piece at a time. If it boils after this the emulsion breaks and the sauce goes greasy; hold it in a warm bain-marie until service.
The tarragonBlanching the shredded leaves for a few seconds sets their colour and takes the edge off the anise. Add them last, with the butter, or the reduction will cook the flavour out.
YieldThe recipe does not say how far to reduce, so the yield can only be estimated: two pints of liquid reduced and enriched might give something in the region of a pint of finished sauce, enough for several portions of veal, sweetbreads, calf's liver or grilled beef.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full record of the restaurant's kitchen, and its hot-sauce chapter runs to well over a hundred numbered variations, each cross-referenced to the stocks and mother sauces earlier in the book. Anything called lyonnaise in this system means onions, the association with Lyon and its onion cookery being long established in French practice by the time Ranhofer wrote. Adding tarragon pulls the sauce toward the older amily and llightens what is otherwise a heavy onion-and-espagnole reduction. The structure here — flavour a base sauce, reduce it, strain out the aromatics, then mount with butter and finish with a fresh herb — is standard nineteenth-century practice, and it is why so many entries in this section are three lines long: the real work sits in sauce numbers 414, 415 and 423.

Century Old Kitchen · Sauce

Every sauce, printed twice.

You just read one recipe three ways — as it was printed, made cookable for today, and set in its history. This book does exactly that for 250 vintage sauces, gravies & relishes, gathered in one place.

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