No. 506

Mussel Sauce

Sauce aux Moules

Scrape eighteen mussels, wash them clean in several waters, and put them into a saucepan with half a gill of water, some vinegar and pepper, but no salt, sprigs of parsley and minced onions; cover the saucepan, set it on the fire, and toss it several times until they open, then take them from their shells, cut off their black parts, and strain the broth after it has well settled; pour off the clear part, leaving the sediment at the bottom, and strain this through a sieve. Put one pint of veloute (No. 415) into a saucepan, also two gills of the mussel broth; reduce, and thicken with four raw egg-yolks, a little nutmeg, half a gill of cream, two ounces of butter, and the juice of a lemon; strain the whole through a tammy (No. 159), and finish by adding a small coffeespoonful of chopped parsley and the eighteen cooked mussels; warm well and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic velouté finished with egg yolks, cream and mussel liquor — closer to a sauce allemande with shellfish than to anything you would pour over pasta. The whole dish turns on temperature at the finishing stage.

Never let it boil after the yolks go inFour yolks in a pint of sauce will set into scrambled egg the moment the pan reaches a simmer. Keep it below about 180F, stir constantly, and "warm well" means exactly that and no more.
GillsA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz. So half a gill of water is 1/4 cup, two gills of mussel broth is 1 cup, half a gill of cream is 1/4 cup.
Velouté No. 415Velouté, reference No. 415 -- Ranhofer sends you to a separate velouté reference recipe, a white roux moistened with white stock. For a mussel sauce a fish velouté is arguably the better match; whatever the base, it should be well reduced and free of raw flour taste before the mussel liquor goes in.
"Scrape" and "the black parts"Farmed rope-grown mussels need little more than a scrub and a pull on the beard he of the shell. The "black parts" Ranhofer tells you to cut off are usually taken to mean the beard and the dark rim of mantle; leave the plump body intact.
No salt, and whyThe instruction is deliberate. Mussel liquor is seawater, and the velouté is already seasoned and reduced. Season only at the very end, after the broth has gone in and the sauce has tightened.
Settling the brothMussels release grit no amount of washing removes. Letting the liquor stand and decanting the clear part off the sediment does more than straining, and is worth the ten minutes; a coffee filter or muslin catches what remains.
TammyA tammy (No. 159) is a fine worsted cloth through which sauce was forced with two people twisting the ends. A fine chinois pressed with a ladle, or a sieve lined with muslin, gives the same result.
YieldAbout a pint of finished sauce with eighteen mussels suspended in it, which would serve several portions of poached white fish. Ranhofer gives it as a sauce, not a stew in its own right.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its sauce chapter is essentially the Parisian repertoire of the mid-nineteenth century transplanted to Manhattan. Sauce aux moules belongs to the family of white fish sauces built on a velouté and enriched with a liaison of yolks and cream — the same construction as sauce normande, which likewise borrows mussel and oyster liquor for depth. The technique of cooking mussels à la marinière with onion, parsley and an acid, then using the strained liquor as the sauce's real seasoning, is older than any of the printed codifications. That Ranhofer's numbering points the reader to another recipe for the velouté is characteristic of the book: it assumes a brigade kitchen where the mother sauces are already standing on the stove, and expects the reader to have made them first.