No. 530

Queen Sauce

Sauce a la Reine

Set into a saucepan, an ounce and a half of fresh bread-crumbs, and one pint of chicken essence (No. 387); pound two ounces of sweet almonds freshly peeled with two gills of cream, and press this forcibly through a napkin. Pound two hard boiled egg-yolks, with two ounces of fresh butter, season with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg, rub it through a sieve, then add this to the bread-crumbs, seasoning with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg, and also the cream almond milk, besides three gills of fresh cream. Chopped truffles may also be added to this sauce.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A white sauce thickened with breadcrumbs rather than flour, enriched with almond milk made from scratch. It is one of Ranhofer's simpler compound sauces, but two of its steps assume a nineteenth-century pantry.

The hinge: no boiling once the cream and egg butter go inThe hinge: gentle heat once the cream and egg butter go in — Breadcrumbs and chicken essence can simmer to soften the crumbs, but after the almond milk, the egg-yolk butter and the three gills of cream are added the sauce is best held below a simmer. Hard boiling risks splitting the butter enrichment.
GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills of cream for the almonds is 1 cup; three gills of additional cream is 1 1/2 cups. The pint of chicken essence is 2 cups.
Chicken essence (No. 387)Ranhofer's essence is a strong chicken stock reduced until deeply flavored and lightly gelatinous, not a bouillon cube dissolved in water. Homemade chicken stock reduced by half — a quart down to the pint the recipe asks for — unsalted, is the nearest equivalent; commercial broth will be thinner and saltier.
Almond milkPounding blanched almonds with cream and wringing them through a napkin is a blender job now: 2 oz (about 1/2 cup) blanched almonds with the cup of cream, buzzed fine, then pressed hard through cheesecloth. Do not substitute carton almond milk, which is mostly water and will not carry the sauce.
"Freshly peeled" almondsRead this as blanched almonds with the skins slipped off, and freshly done rather than long-stored. Buy blanched almonds, or pour boiling water over whole ones and rub the skins away.
BreadcrumbsFresh crumbs from the interior of a white loaf, not dried or seasoned crumbs. An ounce and a half is roughly 3/4 cup loosely packed. They should dissolve into the sauce; if any texture remains, pass the finished sauce through a fine sieve.
SeasoningSalt, cayenne and nutmeg are called for twice, once in the egg butter and once in the sauce. Keep both hands light almalmond and cream base bruises easily under cayenne, and nutmeg is meant to be perceptible only as warmth.
TrufflesThe optional chopped truffles are best folded in at the end, off the heat. Truffle oil is a different flavor entirely and will dominate the almond.
YieldAbout a quart of finished sauce, enough for 8 to 10 servings over poached chicken, sweetbreads, or boiled fowl am the dishes it was built for.

A Little History

"A la reine" am in the queen's manner am was one of the standard nineteenth-century labels for a white dish enriched with cream, almonds or white poultry meat, and it attaches to a whole family of preparations: potage à la reine, vol-au-vent à la reine, and this sauce. The almond-and-breadcrumb thickening is much older than the name and descends from medieval and Renaissance European cookery, where pounded almonds pressed through cloth stood in for dairy on fast days and breadcrumbs did the work later given to roux. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the Delmonico's kitchens in New York for some thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, and its hot-sauce chapter is organized exactly as a brigade would use it am each sauce cross-referenced to the stock or essence it depends on, so that No. 530 is meaningless without No. 387. Sauces of this kind fell out of use as flour- and butter-based béchamel and velouté became the standard, and the bread-thickened white sauce survives today mainly in bread sauce served with roast poultry.