No. 557

Victoria Sauce

Sauce a la Victoria

Cover a saucepan containing one tablespoonful of finely chopped shallots and the juice of two lemons; let boil together, then add two ounces of well chopped mushrooms and boil again until these have evaporated all their moisture, then put in two gills of melted meat glaze. When ready to serve finish the sauce by mixing in a quarter of a pound of butter, a teaspoonful of vinegar, the same of soya sauce (No. 545), a pinch of tarragon leaves and one of parsley, besides two tablespoonsfuls of chopped up pickles.

← No. 556 Venison Sauce Hot Sauces No. 558 Viennese Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A butter-mounted piquant brown sauce, meant for grilled meats. It comes together in about fifteen minutes once the glaze is on hand, and the only real difficulty is the finish.

Two gills of glazeA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup of melted meat glaze. Ranhofer's glaze is brown stock reduced until it sets to a sticky, sliceable jelly; a cup of it melted is intensely concentrated.
If you have no glazeSubstitute a cup of well-reduced veal or beef stock that coats a spoon heavily. Commercial "glace de viande" concentrates work but are salty, so hold back on the soy and taste before adding the pickles.
The hinge: the butter goes in off the heatThe hinge: the butter -- The recipe says only to mix the butter in when ready to serve; it does not specify off the heat. A quarter pound of butter beaten into a cup of glaze behaves as an emulsion. Safest is to pull the pan off the burner, add the butter a piece at a time while swirling, and avoid returning it to a hard boil, which risks breaking it.
Cook the mushrooms dry"Boil again until these have evaporated all their moisture" means exactly that. Two ounces of finely chopped mushrooms should be reduced to a nearly dry, jammy mass before the glaze goes in, otherwise the sauce stays thin and tastes washed out.
Soya sauce, No. 545Ranhofer's own numbered preparation; its composition cannot be confirmed from this page alone. A teaspoon of ordinary dark soy sauce stands in acceptably; it is there for depth and salt.
Pickles means gherkinsPickles -- 'Pickles' here most likely means small sour gherkins or cornichons rather than sweet cucumber slices, though the recipe does not specify. Chop them fine, add at the last moment, and do not cook them.
HerbsA "pinch" of tarragon leaves and parsley is loose here. Figure a teaspoon of each, chopped, added with the butter so their volatile oils are not driven off.
Yield and useAbout a cup and a half, enough for six to eight portions. Spoon it over grilled beef tenderloin, mutton chops or venison; it is too sharp and too concentrated to pour freely.
Holding itEmulsified butter sauces will not sit on a stove. Keep it in a warm bain-marie no hotter than about 130F and use it within the half hour.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, where a formal sauce repertoire ran to hundreds of numbered preparations, each cross-referenced to the others as this one is to No. 545 and No. 557's neighbors. Naming dishes for Queen Victoria was a nineteenth-century commonplace on both sides of the Atlantic — there are Victoria soups, garnishes, puddings and salads, seldom with any documented connection to the Queen beyond flattery of a paying clientele. The construction itself is orthodox mid-century French: an acid reduction of shallot and lemon, a dry mushroom duxelles, a concentrated meat glaze, then butter beaten in at the last moment to give body and gloss. What marks it as of its moment is the piquant finishing battery — vinegar, a bottled "soya," chopped gherkins — the same taste for sharp, dark, savory accents that made Worcestershire and mushroom ketchup fixtures of the period sideboard.