No. 532

Regence Sauce

Sauce a la Regence

For Fat.—Set four ounces of butter in a saucepan, add four ounces of chopped onions; fry lightly and add two ounces of ham cut in three-sixteenth inch squares, eight ounces of minced mushrooms or their parings, branches of parsley, two bay leaves, as much thyme, two cloves and mignonette; fry all these ingredients together without coloring, moisten with two quarts of espagnole (No. 414) and a pint of chicken stock (No. 195), cook the whole for forty-five minutes, skim and pass through a tammy (No. 159). Put in a saucepan on the fire, three gills of white Bordeaux; when reduced to half, add a quarter of a pound of peeled truffles; heat well and put this in with the above sauce.

For Lean.—Use fish stock (No. 195) instead of fat chicken stock, suppress the ham and replace it by sturgeon or carp.

← No. 531 Ravigote Sauces, Aromatic, White, with Oil a Hot Sauces No. 533 Robert Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A compound sauce built on espagnole, from Charles Ranhofer's Delmonico's repertoire. Nothing here is difficult, but almost every quantity assumes a professional kitchen with a stockpot already running.

Espagnole firstTwo quarts of espagnole (No. 414) is the whole foundation: a brown sauce built on brown stock and brown roux, long simmered with aromatic vegetables. Without it you have no sauce, so plan a day ahead or reduce a good brown veal stock to coating consistency as a stand-in.
Gills and other unitsA gill is half a cup, so three gills of white Bordeaux is 1 1/2 cups, reduced to about 3/4 cup. "Three-sixteenth inch squares" of ham simply means a fine, even dice.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked white peppercorns, not a herb or a flower. A scant teaspoon, crushed under a pan bottom, is the right order of magnitude.
Do not color the baseThe butter, onion, ham and mushrooms are sweated, not browned; the recipe says so outright. Espagnole already carries the roasted flavor the sauce needs, and browning the garnish here will darken and coarsen the result. Keep the heat low and stir.
The tammyA tammy (No. 159) was a worsted cloth through which two cooks wrung the sauce to force it smooth. A fine chinois pressed with a ladle, or a fine sieve followed by a pass through cheesecloth, does the same work.
TrufflesA quarter pound of peeled truffles, presumably black, is a luxury item at modern prices. An ounce of fresh truffle, or the liquid from a jar of preserved truffle, gives the perfume at a fraction of the cost. Note that the recipe heats them in the reduced wine before they go into the sauce, so keep that step brief — prolonged heat drives off the aroma.
"For fat" and "for lean"These are the meat-day and fast-day versions. The lean variant swaps chicken stock for fish stock and replaces the ham with sturgeon or carp; the recipe as printed does not say whether the espagnole itself should also be made lean.
Yield and useRoughly five pints before reduction, so expect something over two quarts finished — banquet quantity. Halve or quarter it. Regence sauce is served with poached or braised poultry, sweetbreads and quenelles; the lean version goes to turbot, sole and other fine fish.

A Little History

Sauces "à la Régence" are generally said to take their name from the French Regency of 1715-23, when Philippe d'Orléans governed for the child Louis XV — a period that later cooks and restaurateurs are often said to have treated as shorthand for aristocratic extravagance, and which they attached to garnishes involving truffles, foie gras, cockscombs and quenelles. The recipe appears in The Epicurean (1894), Charles Ranhofer's enormous record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The paired "for fat" and "for lean" versions are a survival of the Catholic fasting calendar in professional French cookery.