No. 507

Neapolitan Sauce

Sauce Napolitaine

Put two ounces of cooked, lean, and well chopped ham into a saucepan with a bunch of parsley garnished with a bay leaf, and as much thyme, some mignonette, nutmeg and cayenne, two gills of Madeira wine, and two gills of broth; let reduce to half on a slow fire, then suppress the bunch of parsley, and add one pint of espagnole (No. 414); boil it up again, despumate, and strain it through a tammy (No. 159), put it back to reduce once more, adding to it two gills of Malaga wine, and a quarter of a pound of current jelly, dissolving the latter slowly by degrees, and two spoonfuls of grated horseradish.

← No. 506 Mussel Sauce Hot Sauces No. 508 Nonpareil Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A game sauce in the classic French manner: an espagnole enriched with ham and Madeira, then sweetened and sharpened at the end. The finish is where it can go wrong.

Add the jelly off the boilThe currant jelly (spelled "current" in the original) is dissolved slowly by degrees for a reason. Added all at once to a hard boil it can go stringy and cloud the sauce; let it melt into a barely simmering sauce, tasting as you go.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. The recipe uses one cup Madeira, one cup broth, and one cup Malaga in the second reduction, against a pint of espagnole.
EspagnoleRanhofer's No. 414 is the classic brown sauce: brown roux moistened with brown stock and mirepoix, simmered and skimmed for hours. A good reduced brown veal stock, lightly thickened, stands in for it without embarrassment.
MignonetteNot the plant and not a dressing here. In this book mignonette means coarsely cracked white or black peppercorns, added whole so they can be strained out.
DespumateTo skim. Bring the sauce to a bare simmer with the pan pulled half off the heat so the scum and fat collect on the cool side, then lift them off before straining.
TammyA tammy is a worsted straining cloth, wrung between two people to force sauce through. A fine chinois pressed with a ladle, or a doubled square of muslin, does the same work.
MalagaSweet Malaga is not what it was and is uncommon outside Spanish shops. A sweet oloroso or cream sherry gives the same raisiny sweetness; if you substitute, cut the currant jelly back or the sauce goes candied.
Horseradish"Two spoonfuls" is unspecified in the original and probably tablespoons. The original adds it during the final reduction; grating it fresh and adding it at the end, off the heat, keeps more of the volatile heat, which prolonged cooking drives off.
Yield and serviceThe original gives no yield; after the reductions you are likely left with something in the region of two cups. It belongs with venison, hare, roast beef tongue or braised ham rather than with delicate meats.

A Little History

Sauce Napolitaine as Charles Ranhofer sets it down here is French cooking's idea of Italy rather than anything from Naples: the nineteenth-century repertoire attached national names to sauces on the strength of a single characteristic ingredient, and in this case the sweet southern wine and the fruit jelly seem to have earned the label. It sits in the same family as poivrade, venaison and the various sweet-sour brown sauces that Carême's generation built on espagnole, all of them intended to cut the richness of roast game. Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York across two separate stints, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that repertoire, cross-referenced by number so a cook could chase espagnole or the tammy back to its own entry. The combination of currant jelly and horseradish with game was equally at home in English and American cooking of the period, which is likely why this particular sauce survived on Delmonico's menus.