No. 509

Sauce a la Normande

Cut three pounds of bony fish into pieces, such as sheepshead, bass, blackfish, redsnapper, etc., let the pieces be of a quarter of a pound each; put them into a saucepan with two minced onions, two ounces of mushroom parings, some parsley, a bay leaf, the same quantity of thyme and two cloves of garlic, moisten with a quarter of a bottle of white wine, three pints of water, two gills of oyster liquor and let the whole cook slowly for thirty minutes, then strain the sauce through a fine sieve, and add to it one quart of veloute (No. 415), another quarter of a bottle of white wine, and reduce it all; just when ready to serve, thicken the sauce with four egg-yolks and incorporate into it two ounces of butter and the juice of a lemon; season well and finish by straining once more through a tammy (No. 159).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classical fish velouté enriched with an egg-yolk liaison — Ranhofer's version of the standard normande. Everything hangs on the last minute, when the yolks go in.

The hinge: the liaison must not boilOnce the four yolks go in, the sauce must be held below about 180F. Temper them with a ladle of the hot sauce first, return the mixture off the heat, and stir until it coats the spoon. A boil curdles it into fish-flavoured scrambled egg and no amount of straining will bring it back.
Gills and quarter-bottlesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of oyster liquor is one cup. A quarter of a bottle of wine is roughly 6 fl oz at modern bottle sizes, used twice, for about 1 1/2 cups in all.
Velouté No. 415The quart of velouté is the book's own white roux-based sauce. For this dish it should be made with fish stock rather than veal or chicken, or the fish essence you have just built will be buried.
The fishSheepshead and blackfish (tautog) were New York market staples in the 1890s and are hard to buy now; red snapper is often mislabelled. Any lean white-fish frames, heads (gills removed) and trimmings will do — cod, halibut, hake, sole, bass. Avoid oily fish, which turn the essence rancid-tasting.
Thirty minutes is deliberateFish bones give everything they have in half an hour. Longer extraction pulls out bitterness and glue, so strain on time rather than letting it sit at a simmer while you do something else.
Mushroom paringsTwo ounces of stems and peelings, the sort of trimming a professional kitchen would have on hand. Chopped whole button mushrooms substitute directly.
The tammyA tammy was a stretched worsted cloth through which two cooks wrung the sauce. A fine chinois lined with damp muslin, or a conical strainer and a ladle, gives the same result.
Seasoning lastOyster liquor is salty and the sauce is reduced, so hold back on salt until the butter and lemon are in. Add the lemon juice off the heat, with the butter.
YieldThe recipe does not say how far to reduce, so the finished quantity will vary; it is restaurant scale, for poached sole, turbot or bass. The stock stage halves cleanly if you want less.

A Little History

Sauce normande belongs to the Norman coast by way of the Paris restaurant kitchen: a fish velouté with mushroom essence, egg yolks and butter, built above all as the sauce for sole à la normande, the poached sole garnished with oysters, mussels, mushrooms and crayfish that was a fixture of nineteenth-century grande cuisine. The name is generally traced to that dish rather than to any farmhouse cooking in Normandy — there is no cider in the classical formula, and Ranhofer's version has no cream either, though the sauce as codified by Escoffier is finished with cream. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years and published The Epicurean in 1894, sets it down in the cross-referenced style of the professional repertoire: the sauce is not a standalone preparation but a step that assumes a quart of velouté already made at No. 415 and a tammy already described at No. 159. The two gills of oyster liquor are a quiet reminder of how cheap and constant oysters were on the American east coast at the time, plentiful enough that a kitchen could count on their brine as a routine seasoning.