No. 511

Orange Sauce

Sauce a l'Orange

Shred the peel of an orange as finely as possible, throw the pieces into boiling water, and let them cook for five minutes, then drain and put them into a saucepan with two gills of beef juice, three gills of espagnole (No. 414), the juice of two oranges and of one lemon, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A brown sauce sharpened with citrus, from Ranhofer's Delmonico's repertoire. It assumes you already have espagnole on hand; everything else is a five-minute job.

GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills of beef juice is 1 cup, three gills of espagnole is 1½ cups, giving roughly 3 cups of finished sauce.
Beef juiceRanhofer means jus: the pressed or reduced juices of roast beef, not water-thin stock. A well-reduced, unsalted brown beef stock or the deglazed pan juices from a roast is the working equivalent.
EspagnoleThe classic roux-thickened brown mother sauce made with brown stock, mirepoix and tomato, simmered and skimmed for hours. A good demi-glace, loosened slightly, stands in; commercial gravy bases are a poor substitute, being already salted.
Peel only, no pithShred only the coloured zest. Any white pith carried along survives the blanching and turns the sauce bitter. A zester or fine julienne of pared peel works better than a grater here, since the shreds are meant to be visible.
Why blanchFive minutes in boiling water draws out the harsh oils and softens the shreds so they stay tender in the sauce rather than staying leathery. Drain them well, or the wash water will thin the finished sauce.
The unstated simmerNo cooking time is given. Bring the assembled sauce just to a simmer and hold it there only long enough to marry — a few minutes. Hard boiling drives off the fresh orange aroma, which is the whole point of the sauce.
Citrus last, and tasteAdd the orange and lemon juice off the heat, taste, and hold back part of the orange if the sauce turns cloying; the lemon is there to keep it from doing so.
ServingThis belongs with duck, goose, game birds, roast pork or glazed ham. Strain it if you prefer a smooth sauce, but the shredded peel was meant to be left in.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) set down the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York as a working French repertoire, and this sauce sits in the long line of orange sauces descended from the French bigarade, made with the sour Seville orange and generally traced to the classic pairing of citrus with duck. What distinguishes Ranhofer's version is that it is built on espagnole and meat juice rather than on the roasting pan alone, which is characteristic of a large brigade kitchen: the mother sauce is made in quantity in advance, and the individual sauces are finished to order in minutes. The recipe calls for both orange and lemon juice, though Ranhofer gives no reason for the combination.