No. 524

Polish Sauce

Sauce a la Polonaise

Place in a deep saucepan, two tablespoonfuls of grated fresh horseradish, one coffeespoonful of powdered sugar, with one tablespoonful of meat glaze (No. 401), and a pint of veloute (No. 415); squeeze in the juice of a lemon, add the chopped peel of a quarter of a lemon with a teaspoonful of chopped parsley or fennel, season with salt, pepper and nutmeg, set the saucepan in a bain-marie and when ready to serve incorporate two ounces of fresh butter into the sauce.

← No. 523 Poivrade for Sauces Hot Sauces No. 525 Pompadour Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A finished velouté, sharpened with horseradish and lemon and mounted with butter at the last moment. Two of the ingredients are cross-references to earlier numbers in the book, so the work is mostly in what you have on hand before you start.

The hinge: mount the butter off the heatThe two ounces of butter go in at the very end, whisked in a bit at a time while the sauce is warm but not simmering. Bring it back to a boil after that and the emulsion breaks into a greasy film.
Velouté (No. 415)A pale roux-thickened sauce built on veal or chicken stock rather than milk. A pint of any well-made light stock velouté works; it should coat a spoon, not stand up on it.
Meat glaze (No. 401)Stock reduced to a syrupy, tacky glace de viande. One tablespoon of commercial demi-glace concentrate or a very reduced homemade brown stock gives the same job — depth and gloss. Bouillon cubes are too salty for this and will fight the seasoning.
A coffeespoonfulSmaller than a teaspoon — somewhere between a quarter and a half teaspoon. The sugar is there to round the horseradish, not to sweeten the sauce.
Fresh horseradishGrate it just before use; its heat is volatile and fades fairly quickly once grated. Bottled prepared horseradish can stand in, but drain it well and cut back the lemon juice, since it is already packed in vinegar.
The lemon peelTake only the yellow zest of a quarter lemon and chop it very fine; any white pith turns the sauce bitter as it holds.
Bain-marieA water bath — set the saucepan in a wider pan of hot water, or over a pan of barely simmering water, to hold the sauce at serving heat without cooking it further.
Yield and servingMakes a generous pint, enough for six to eight. It belongs with boiled beef, brisket, tongue, ham, or poached firm-fleshed fish.

A Little History

Ranhofer built The Epicurean (1894) out of his years at Delmonico's, and its sauce chapter is essentially the classical French repertoire arranged by name and number — each entry assuming the cook has already made the mother sauces earlier in the book. Sauces called à la polonaise in nineteenth-century French kitchens signaled Polish and more broadly Central and Eastern European taste, which meant horseradish: grated fresh and served with boiled beef, ham and smoked tongue in a tradition that also produced the cold horseradish-and-cream sauces of the region. The French dressed the idea up, folding the root into a velouté with meat glaze, lemon and butter rather than serving it raw. The name is loose usage, as such labels usually were — a second, unrelated polonaise garnish of browned buttered crumbs, chopped egg and parsley over cauliflower or asparagus survives more widely today, and the two share nothing but the adjective.