No. 496

Marinade Sauce

Sauce Marinade

Cut into thin slices a quarter of a pound of carrots and as many onions; lay them in a sauce-pan with two ounces of butter, and a bunch of parsley garnished with a bay leaf, as much thyme, basil, and a clove of garlic, two minced shallots, and four cloves. Fry the whole lightly without coloring in the butter, and then moisten with two quarts of water, and one pint of vinegar or more according to strength, and a tablespoonful of peppercorns; let cook for one hour, then strain through a sieve, return it to the fire, and reduce to half; add one quart of espagnole (No. 414) and reduce again to the consistency of a sauce.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French mother-sauce derivative: an aromatic vinegar infusion reduced hard, then bound with espagnole. It is a two-day project unless you already have brown sauce on hand.

You need espagnole firstThe quart of espagnole (Ranhofer's No. 414) is the body of the sauce; without it you have a sharp vegetable vinegar. A good homemade brown sauce or a well-reduced veal stock thickened lightly with a brown roux will stand in, but jarred demi-glace concentrate will make the finished sauce salty once it is reduced again.
Weights and volumesA quarter pound each of carrot and onion is about 115 g of each, roughly one large carrot and one medium onion. Two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons. Two quarts of water plus a pint of vinegar is about 2.4 litres of liquid going into the pan.
The vinegar is the variable"according to strength" is Ranhofer acknowledging that vinegar strength varied from batch to batch and supplier to supplier. Start with the pint, taste the infusion before reducing, and add more only if it reads flat.
Sweat, do not brown"Fry lightly without coloring" is the hinge. Any browning of the carrot and onion at this stage puts a caramel note into a sauce whose whole point is clean acidity against the depth of the espagnole. Keep the pan at a bare sizzle, lid ajar, for eight to ten minutes.
Whole spices, whole herbsThe four cloves and the tablespoon of peppercorns go in whole; they are infusing, not seasoning, and everything is strained out. Cracking the peppercorns lightly with the flat of a knife extracts more in the hour of cooking without making the sauce gritty.
The two reductionsReduce the strained infusion from roughly 2.4 litres to about 1.2, which takes 40 minutes to an hour at a steady boil in a wide pan. The second reduction, after the espagnole goes in, is by eye: pull it when it coats a spoon and a finger drawn across leaves a clean line.
SkimThe recipe does not mention it. Brown sauces throw a scum of fat and albumen during the second reduction; set the pan slightly off-centre on the burner so the boil pushes the skim to one side and lift it off with a ladle.
Yield and useExpect somewhere near a quart of finished sauce, depending how far the second reduction is taken. Ranhofer gives no serving suggestion here; sharp brown sauces of this type were generally paired with game and dark meats. It will keep several days refrigerated and freezes well in portions.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete codification of the kitchen he ran, and its numbered cross-references work like a manual rather than a cookbook. Sauce marinade takes its name and character from the marinade itself, the vinegar-and-aromatic bath in which butchers and cooks held game and tough cuts before refrigeration was general; the sauce reproduces that liquid deliberately and then tames it with espagnole, so the meat and its sauce taste of the same thing. It belongs to the family of sharp brown sauces around poivrade and venaison that Carême's generation had already fixed in place, and Ranhofer's version is essentially the French professional standard transplanted to Twenty-Sixth Street. The structure is worth noting: an infusion cooked an hour, strained, reduced by half, then reduced again with a quart of mother sauce. That is a great deal of labour and fuel for one component, and it only makes sense in a brigade kitchen where espagnole was simmering permanently and a marmite of it could be drawn off at will.