No. 538

Sharp Sauce with Capers and Onion Puree

Sauce Piquante aux Capres et a la Puree d'Oignons

Sharp Sauce.—Reduce to one-half, five or six spoonfuls of tarragon vinegar, with some shallots, cut in one-eighth of an inch squares. Put on the fire to reduce, three or four gills of sauce espagnole (No. 414) free from all fat, one gill of veal blond, (No. 423) and then the above infusion, pouring it in slowly, and when the sauce is sufficiently succulent and thick, strain it into a saucepan and keep it warm in a bain-marie.

Sharp with Capers, and Onion Puree--Add a pint of espagnole (No. 414) to a tablespoonful of good vinegar, and set them in a saucepan with a bay leaf, a clove of garlic, a little thyme, two cloves, and two gills of broth, also a pinch of powdered sugar; let the whole boil for fifteen minutes, then skim off the fat; strain through a tammy, and finish by adding two spoonfuls of capers, and two of onion puree.

← No. 537 Shallot Sauce and Shallot Gravy Hot Sauces No. 539 Chopped Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade kitchen where espagnole, veal blond and onion puree are already standing by, so the entry reads as an assembly note rather than a recipe. Two separate sauces are given here: the plain piquante, and the version finished with capers and onion.

Gills and spoonfulsA gill is half a cup, so three or four gills of espagnole is 1.5-2 cups and two gills of broth is one cup. "Spoonfuls" in The Epicurean is unspecified and is usually taken as a tablespoon; on that reading the five or six spoonfuls of tarragon vinegar is about a third of a cup, which reduced by half leaves some three tablespoons of infusion.
Sauce espagnoleThe brown mother sauce of No. 414: a brown roux with brown stock and aromatic vegetables, long simmered and skimmed; the exact composition is in that entry. A well-reduced brown veal stock thickened lightly with a brown roux is the practical stand-in; a demi-glace works but is more concentrated, so cut it with stock.
Veal blondNo. 423 is a pale veal stock made from unbrowned bones and knuckle. Any light, unsalted veal or chicken stock serves the same purpose here, which is to loosen the espagnole and give it gloss.
Add the acid slowlyThe instruction to pour the reduced vinegar infusion in gradually is the hinge. The sharpness should be judged as it goes in and stopped when the sauce tastes bright rather than sour; once the vinegar is all in, there is no way back except more stock.
Tammy and bain-marieA tammy is a fine worsted straining cloth, wrung between two people to force sauce through. A conical chinois lined with muslin does the job. The bain-marie is simply a covered pan set in hot, not boiling, water, which holds the sauce below the point where it would break or reduce further.
Capers and onion at the endBoth go in off the boil and after straining, so the capers stay whole and the onion puree keeps its sweetness. Rinse and drain salt-packed capers; brined capers only need draining.
Onion pureeOnions cooked down without colour and passed through a sieve; a puree of this kind underlies the sauce now known as soubise, which is usually bound with bechamel or rice. Two spoonfuls is a small addition intended to round the vinegar, not to make an onion sauce.
YieldThe second sauce starts from a pint of espagnole plus a cup of broth and will reduce over fifteen minutes of boiling and skimming; the recipe gives no yield, but the result is a sauceboat's worth to serve alongside grilled or roasted meat.

A Little History

Sauce piquante belongs to the family of brown sauces sharpened with vinegar and aromatics that French cooking used to cut through rich or reheated meat, and it appears in nineteenth-century service most often with pork, tongue, boiled beef and grilled leftovers. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), organised his book as a professional reference: the cross-references to No. 414 and No. 423 assume the reader already has the mother sauces on the stove, which is why an entry like this can be four sentences long and still take a good deal for granted. The pairing of capers with a sweetened, acidulated brown sauce is a long-established one, and the pinch of sugar here does what it has always done in these sauces, which is to keep the vinegar from reading as merely sour.