No. 555

Venetian Sauce

Sauce a la Venitienne

Have ready in a steamer or bain-marie saucepan one pint of veloute sauce (No. 415), and just when about serving add to it one gill of chicken (No. 398) or fish glaze (No. 399), some salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and a teaspoonful of good vinegar; thicken the sauce with egg-yolks and cream, then add two ounces of fresh butter, and a coffeespoonful of fresh parsley, also a pinch of finely shredded tarragon leaves.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A compound sauce built on velouté, finished with an egg-and-cream liaison and green herbs. Everything depends on holding it below a simmer once the yolks go in.

The hinge: never boil after the yolksOnce the egg-yolk and cream liaison is stirred in, keep the sauce between 160 and 180F. Above that the yolks scramble and the sauce turns grainy, and no amount of whisking will bring it back.
Bain-marie, not a steamer basketThe "steamer or bain-marie saucepan" is a double boiler or a bowl over barely trembling water. That gentle indirect heat is the whole reason the sauce survives the liaison and can be held for service.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. Here it is a large addition relative to a pint of velouté, so the glaze carries much of the flavor.
GlazeRanhofer's chicken or fish glaze is stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A good reduced homemade stock is the substitute; commercial demi-glace or glace de volaille concentrate works, but cut back sharply on salt since these are already seasoned.
VeloutéVelouté is a blond roux moistened with white stock and simmered until it coats a spoon. Match the stock to the dish: a fish-based velouté for fish, a poultry one for chicken and vegetables.
Unstated liaison quantitiesThe original gives no amount for the yolks or cream. For a pint of sauce, something like three yolks beaten with a quarter cup of cream is a common proportion. Temper the mixture with a ladle of hot sauce before it goes into the pan.
CoffeespoonfulSomewhere between a quarter and a half teaspoon, smaller than a teaspoon. It measures the parsley here; the tarragon is only a pinch, meant as a background note rather than the dominant flavor.
Vinegar and herbs lastThe teaspoonful of 'good vinegar' gives the sauce its acid accent; it goes in before the liaison, then the butter off direct heat, then the parsley and tarragon at the moment of serving so they stay green.
YieldAbout a pint and a half finished, enough to sauce eight portions of poached fish or chicken. It does not reheat well; make it to order.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its sauce chapter is essentially the French classical repertory of the 1870s and 80s set down in English. Sauce v tienne belongs to the family of small white sauces distinguished by an acid accent and green herbs: many nineteenth-century versions begin with a reduction of white wine or vinegar with tarragon and chervil, which is finished into velout and Escoffier's later formula tints it with a green herb butter. The Venetian name appears to be decorative rather than geographical, one of the many place-labels French kitchens attached to variations on a mother sauce, and no connection to Venetian cooking is documented. What dates Ranhofer's version is the finishing with glaze and an egg-yolk liaison, a richness that the twentieth century steadily trimmed away.