No. 523

Poivrade for Sauces

Poivrade pour Sauces

Not to be mistaken for poivrade sauce. Put into a saucepan four ounces of butter with half a pound of onions and six shallots, both cut into one-eighth inch squares, also a pound of carrots, half a pound of lean ham cut in three-sixteenth inch squares, a tablespoonful of pepper corns or else a teaspoonful of mignonette, a bunch of parsley garnished with two bay leaves, a clove of garlic and four cloves. Fry the whole slowly without coloring; then moisten with one pint of vinegar and a pint of veal blond (No. 423), reduce all until dry, and moisten once more with a pint of veal blond and two gills of white wine, also three pints of espagnole (No. 414). Boil slowly, despumate for an hour, and strain through a sieve.

← No. 522 Poivrade Sauce Hot Sauces No. 524 Polish Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is not a finished sauce but a concentrated peppery base kept on hand in a professional kitchen and spooned into other sauces. Ranhofer's quantities are restaurant-scale; a quarter batch is plenty for a home cook.

Read the note firstRanhofer warns that this is not sauce poivrade (No. 522). It is a seasoning essence, strained and stored, used to sharpen game and brown sauces. Judge it by concentration, not by whether it would sauce a plate on its own.
Veal blond and espagnole"Veal blond" is a pale veal stock, cooked without browning the bones. Espagnole is the classic brown sauce of stock, brown roux and mirepoix. Both are cross-referenced recipes in the book; without them made properly, this preparation has nothing to build on. A good unsalted brown veal stock, reduced, stands in for the espagnole at some loss of body.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked peppercorns, traditionally white pepper. The alternative given — a tablespoon of whole corns — is the same seasoning in a form easier to strain out.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of white wine is one cup. Counting everything the recipe pours in, the liquid comes to about thirteen cups, four of which are reduced away dry before the second moistening.
DespumateSkim. As the sauce holds at a bare simmer, fat and albumen rise at the cooler edge of the pan; set the pot slightly off-center on the burner so the scum collects on one side and can be lifted off cleanly for the full hour.
Fry without coloringThe vegetables and ham are sweated in butter, not browned. Colour here would double up on the espagnole's roast character and muddy the pepper. Keep the heat low and stir.
The dry reductionThe first pint of vinegar and pint of stock must go almost completely — the pan should be glazed, not wet — before the second moistening. This is where the harshness of the vinegar is cooked off and its acidity concentrated into something usable.
Yield and keepingThe book gives no yield; after the hour's simmering and straining expect something over a quart. Keep it refrigerated and use it within a few days, or freeze it in small portions, which is how a base like this earns its keep.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that establishment's practice, which explains both the scale of this preparation and its numbered cross-references — it is a working system, not a book of single dishes. Poivrade comes simply from poivre, pepper, and the name has been attached since at least the eighteenth century to sharp, vinegar-and-pepper sauces served with game and other strong meats. What is set down here is the older kitchen habit of keeping a concentrated flavour base in reserve: one long, careful reduction made in quantity, strained, and then drawn on to lift a finished sauce at the moment of service. Escoffier's codification a decade later would formalise much the same logic under the heading of small sauces derived from espagnole, and the distinction Ranhofer flags in his opening line — base versus finished sauce — is exactly the sort of thing a brigade cook needed clarified.