No. 522

Poivrade Sauce

Sauce Poivrade

For Fat Poivrade a l'Espagnole.—Have a pint of poivrade (No. 523), half a pint of espagnole (No. 414), half a pint of veal blond (No. 423), and reduce all till properly done, season well.

For Lean Poivrade.—Suppress the ham from the poivrade (No. 523), and replace it by sturgeon, and the fat stock by some lean stock (No. 195).

For White Poivrade with Veloute.—Reduce two gills of white wine to half, adding some white peppers, aromatic herbs and mushroom parings. Put into this reduced stock three gills of veloute sauce (No. 415), with a little glaze (No. 401), and then stir in slowly a few spoonfuls of good stock (No. 423); when the sauce becomes succulent, set it into a deep saucepan, and if not used at once in a bain-marie.

← No. 521 Pimentade Sauce Hot Sauces No. 523 Poivrade for Sauces →

For the Modern Kitchen

Three finished versions of one pepper sauce, all of them assembled from other numbered preparations in The Epicurean. Read it as an assembly formula rather than a standalone recipe: nothing here works until the base poivrade, espagnole or velouté already exists.

Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of wine is one cup and three gills of velouté is a cup and a half. The pint is a US pint, two cups.
What the cross-references arePoivrade (No. 523) is a peppercorn-and-vinegar reduction with mirepoix and ham; espagnole (No. 414) is the brown mother sauce; velouté (No. 415) the pale one built on white stock; veal blond (No. 423) a light veal stock; glaze (No. 401) stock reduced to a syrup. Without at least two of these on hand the entry is unusable.
Fat and lean"Fat" and "lean" are kitchen shorthand for meat-based and meat-free, the lean version intended for fast days. The only changes given are ham for sturgeon and the fat stock for the lean stock of No. 195.
SturgeonWild sturgeon is now protected under CITES and effectively off the market. Farmed sturgeon is sold, but smoked farmed sturgeon or a firm smoked white fish gives the same salty, dense contribution the ham made.
Reduce till properly doneFor the fat version this means the four cups of combined liquid taken down until it coats a spoon and tastes concentrated rather than merely hot, perhaps a third to half its volume. Skim the surface as it goes; the fat that rises carries off flavor if it is stirred back in.
Peppercorns, not ground pepperThe "white peppers" of the veloute version are most likely whole corns steeped in the wine reduction and strained out, though the text does not say so. Ground pepper held in a sauce over heat turns harsh and dusty.
Bain-marie holdingA water bath at around 160-175F keeps the sauce hot without letting it reduce further or catch. Cover the surface or lay on a film of butter to stop a skin forming, and do not hold it more than an hour or two.
Mushroom paringsStems and trimmings, used here purely for their savory liquid. Any mushroom trimming works; strain the reduction before the velouté goes in.
YieldEach version makes roughly two cups after reduction, enough sauce for eight to twelve plated portions of venison, mutton or game in the Delmonico's manner.

A Little History

Poivrade takes its name simply from poivre, pepper, and belongs to the family of sharp brown sauces classically served with venison, hare and other game, where vinegar and crushed peppercorns cut through rich dark meat. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working reference for professional kitchens, which is why entries like this one read as cross-referenced formulas rather than instructions for a household cook: the reader is assumed to have stockpots and mother sauces already going. The division into "fat" and "lean" versions reflects a Catholic calendar still shaping restaurant menus in the period, with abstinence days requiring a fish-based substitute for the ham and meat stock; sturgeon's role in lean cookery rests on its firm texture as a meat substitute.