No. 552

Turtle Sauce, Fat and Lean

Sauce Tortue Grasse et Maigre

Fat.—Pour into a saucepan three gills of dry Madeira wine, add two ounces of minced, lean ham, one pinch of mignonette, a bunch of parsley garnished with a bay leaf, the same quantity of thyme and basil, two small green peppers, one chopped shallot, one ounce of truffles and two of mushrooms chopped separately. Let all these ingredients simmer and reduce on a low fire adding to them four gills of espagnole (No. 414), two gills of concentrated veal blond (No. 423), two gills of tomatoes (No. 730), and add two more gills of Madeira wine; strain the sauce through a tammy and beat in when ready to serve two ounces of fresh butter.

Lean.—Cut into slices half a pound each of carp, eels and pike; put them into a saucepan with a quarter of a bottle of white wine, one quart of water, one clove of garlic, four ounces of onions cut in four, two ounces of mushroom parings, a bunch of parsley containing basil, marjoram, thyme and bay leaf, some mace, mignonette and a pinch of cayenne. Let simmer and reduce the stock to half on a very slow fire, then strain it forcibly through a tammy, return it to the fire and add one pint of espagnole (No. 414), and one gill of tomato puree (No. 730); reduce once more, pour in a quarter of a bottleful of champagne, squeeze in the juice of a lemon, and when ready to use incorporate into the sauce two ounces of lobster butter (No 580).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Two versions of the same sauce: the grasse built on brown stock and Madeira, the maigre on a freshwater fish stock for fast days. Both are finishing sauces for turtle or mock-turtle preparations, and both depend on component recipes Ranhofer numbers elsewhere in the book.

Gills and bottlesA gill is half a cup, so three gills is 1½ cups and four gills is a pint. "A quarter of a bottleful" of wine is roughly 6 fl oz from a standard 750 ml bottle.
MignonetteMignonette is coarsely cracked peppercorns, white or a white-and-black mix, not a ground powder. A pinch here means a generous pinch of the cracked corns, which are strained out with everything else.
The sub-recipesEspagnole (No. 414) is the brown mother sauce; veal blond (No. 423) is a lightly coloured concentrated veal stock; No. 730 is tomato purée. Lobster butter (No. 580) is shell and coral pounded with butter and strained. Without these the sauce cannot be reproduced as written, though a good reduced brown veal stock stands in for the espagnole and blond together.
TammyA tammy is a worsted cloth through which sauce is wrung by two people twisting opposite ends. A fine chinois worked with a ladle, or a sieve lined with muslin, does the same job.
The hinge: butter goes in off the heatThe hinge: butter goes in at the last moment -- Both finishes — fresh butter in the fat version, lobster butter in the lean — are beaten in at service. Ranhofer does not say to draw the pan off the fire, but standard practice is to do so: boiled afterwards, the emulsion can break and the lobster butter lose its perfume.
Reduce slowly, skim"Simmer and reduce on a low fire" means bare movement at one side of the pan rather than a rolling boil, so fat and scum collect at the edge and can be lifted off before the sauce is strained.
The second MadeiraThe Madeira is split deliberately: the first three gills cook out with the aromatics, the last two go in near the end for aroma. Do not consolidate them.
The lean fishCarp, eel and pike are the classic freshwater trio for a maigre stock and give body from their gelatine. Pike and eel are hard to buy in much of the US; a mixed stock from a firm white fish plus a gelatinous cut will approximate the texture, though not the character.

A Little History

Sauce tortue takes its name from the dish it dresses rather than from any ingredient: no turtle goes into it. It belongs to the nineteenth-century service of green turtle and of mock turtle made from calf's head, where the sauce carried the Madeira, tomato and heavily herbed profile associated with turtle cookery. The aromatic bundle here — basil, marjoram, thyme, bay — is close to what French kitchens sold as herbes à tortue. The pairing of grasse and maigre versions reflects the church calendar: the lean sauce, built on carp, eel and pike instead of veal and ham, let the same dish appear on days when meat was forbidden. Charles Ranhofer, who cooked at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, keeps that distinction alive.