No. 494

Sauce a la Mantaise

Pound four ounces of chicken fat livers with two ounces of beef marrow; fry in two ounces of butter, two ounces of mushrooms, one teaspoonful of chopped parsley, two chopped shallots, and one crushed clove of garlic; let this get cold, and then pound it well adding to it the pounded livers and marrow; with this preparation fill a mold well lined with bardes of fat pork, and cook it in the oven for an hour, then unmold it over a sieve to drain. Dilute this mixture with a pint of espagnole (No. 414) or veloute (No. 415), and one or two gills of chicken essence (No. 387); strain it through a tammy, and beat up the sauce well before serving.

← No. 493 Maitre d'Hotel Sauce, Thickened Hot Sauces No. 495 Sauce a la Marceau →

For the Modern Kitchen

A compound liver-and-marrow forcemeat, baked, drained, and then let down into a brown or white mother sauce. Ranhofer assumes you already have espagnole or veloute and a chicken essence on hand, so budget for those before you start.

The hinge: drain, then dilute gentlyThe baked forcemeat is unmolded onto a sieve so the rendered pork fat and butter run off; only the drained paste goes into the sauce. Skipping it leaves the sauce greasy and harder to bring together.
"Chicken fat livers"Most likely the fattened livers of a fowl rather than chicken fat plus livers, though the phrasing is ambiguous. Four ounces of ordinary chicken livers, trimmed of green spots and connective tissue, is the practical substitute.
Beef marrowTwo ounces is roughly the marrow from one or two large cut marrow bones. The recipe pounds it raw; if you prefer, marrow is often soaked in cold salted water to purge blood first.
Bardes of fat porkThin sheets of unsmoked pork back fat used to line the mold. Fresh fatback sliced thin does the job; cured or smoked products will add salt and smoke to the sauce.
Oven and vesselThe recipe gives only "the oven" and an hour, with no temperature and no water bath specified. Liver forcemeat should be cooked through to 160F; check with a thermometer rather than trusting the clock if your mold is shallow.
Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so one or two gills of chicken essence is 1/2 to 1 cup. The pint of espagnole or veloute is 2 cups. Add the essence gradually -- the second gill is for consistency, not obligatory.
TammyA tammy is a woven worsted cloth through which sauce was wrung by two cooks twisting opposite ends. A fine chinois worked with a ladle, or a sieve lined with damp muslin, gives the same result.
Finishing and yield"Beat up the sauce well" means whisk hard off the heat to emulsify the liver fat back in; keep it below a simmer once strained or it will granulate. Expect about 3 cups, enough for eight to ten portions of poultry, sweetbreads or grilled meat.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and its sauce chapter is essentially the French classical repertory as it stood just before Escoffier codified it: a handful of mother sauces, each numbered, and then dozens of derivatives built on them by cross-reference. Sauces named a la Mantaise are sometimes linked to Mantes, on the Seine west of Paris, though the connection is not documented; by this period the attachment of place-names and personal names to garnished sauces was largely decorative. What is genuinely of its period is the method: an entire baked liver-and-marrow forcemeat, barded with pork fat and cooked in a mold, made purely to be broken down and strained into a pint of sauce. That kind of labor made sense only in a brigade kitchen where a large espagnole was always on hand and where nothing, least of all marrow, went to waste.