No. 560

Villeroi Sauce

Sauce a la Villeroi

Put into a sautoire with some butter two ounces of lean ham; fry for a few minutes, then drain off the butter and moisten the ham with one gill of white wine; reduce it until dry, then pour in a pint of veloute (No. 415) and season the sauce with mignonette and nutmeg; reduce again and then thicken with four egg-yolks diluted in a gill of cream; let the sauce boil up once or twice while stirring it at the bottom of the sautoire with a reducing spatula, then strain it through a tammy (No. 159), and mix in with it some chopped and drained mushrooms, also a teaspoonful of chopped parsley or fine herbs. This sauce should be more consistent than allemande sauce and it is used only when beginning to cool, to coat cold meats. It can also be soubised by adding to it a few tablespoonfuls of soubise sauce (No. 543).

← No. 559 Villars Sauce Hot Sauces No. 561 Westphalian Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A thick, egg-enriched velouté meant to set as it cools, so it will cling to whatever it is spread on. The consistency is the whole point, and everything else in the method serves it.

The hinge: reduce until it coatsThis sauce has to be stiffer than allemande, thick enough to hold on a cold cutlet or wing and set as it cools. Reduce the velouté hard before the liaison goes in; a thin Villeroi will simply run off and is unusable for its intended purpose.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. So half a cup of white wine and half a cup of cream, against a pint of velouté.
Sautoire and tammyA sautoire is a straight-sided sauté pan with a wide base, good for reduction. A tammy is a worsted straining cloth wrung between two people; a fine chinois pressed with a ladle, or a sieve lined with damp muslin, does the same work.
MignonetteCoarsely ground white pepper, not a vinegar dressing. The word is used here in the older sense of pepper left coarse rather than fine, and since the sauce is strained the coarse grind causes no trouble.
The egg liaisonFour yolks in a gill of cream is a heavy liaison and it will scramble if hurried. Temper with a ladle of the hot sauce first, return it off the heat, and bring it up stirring constantly across the bottom of the pan. "Boil up once or twice" means a brief surge to set the yolks and kill the raw-starch and raw-egg character, not a rolling boil held for any time.
Velouté No. 415 and soubise No. 543Velouté No. 415 and soubise No. 543 -- The velouté is a white veal or poultry stock thickened with a blond roux. Soubise is an onion purée sauce; a few spoonfuls sweeten and pale the sauce for use with poultry.
The mushrooms go in after strainingChop and drain them thoroughly, or their liquid will loosen the sauce you just spent time tightening.
How it is actually usedThis page says only that the sauce is used as it begins to cool, to coat cold meats. In wider French practice 'à la Villeroi' goes further: the coated pieces -- sweetbreads, chicken wings, cutlets -- are left to firm on a tray, then breaded and deep-fried. Chill the coated pieces properly before crumbing or the breading will not stay put.

A Little History

The name is generally traced to the Villeroy family, the ducs and marshals of France prominent at the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV, and like béchamel, soubise and mornay it belongs to that class of French sauces attached to a noble house by tradition rather than by any documented act of invention. What distinguishes it from its neighbours in this chapter is that it is not really a sauce for pouring at all: it is a setting coat, a technique disguised as a sauce, and the entries for chicken wings, sweetbreads and lamb cutlets "à la Villeroi" scattered through the rest of The Epicurean all point back to this page. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some thirty years, published the book in 1894 as a complete professional system, which is why the recipe cross-references a velouté and a soubise instead of repeating them, and why it assumes a tammy cloth and a brigade with hands to spare for wringing it.