No. 564

Zuchette Sauce

Sauce a la Zuchette

Reduce some brown espagnole sauce with the liquid part of drained tomatoes, add some dry mushrooms that have been previously soaked, moisten from time to time with a little veal blond stock (No. 423). Pare some cucumbers in either clove of garlic or olive shape, blanch and cook these in white broth having just sufficient to moisten, so that when the cucumbers are done the stock will be thoroughly reduced. Strain the sauce through a tammy, put in the cucumbers and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A brown sauce garnished with turned cucumbers, written for a kitchen with espagnole and stockpots already going. The work is mostly in the garnish; the sauce itself is a straightforward reduction.

The hinge: cook the cucumbers dryBarely cover the blanched cucumbers with broth so the liquid is gone at the moment they turn tender. Any leftover cooking liquid dilutes the finished sauce and the cucumbers go from firm to collapsed within a minute or two of that point.
EspagnoleRanhofer's brown sauce is a long-simmered veal-and-ham stock thickened with brown roux, with aromatic vegetables and tomato in the mix. A good commercial demi-glace, thinned with stock, stands in acceptably; jarred "brown gravy" does not.
Veal blond stock (No. 423)A pale veal stock, only lightly coloured, so it adds body without darkening the sauce further. Any unsalted light veal or chicken stock works; salt only at the end, since the sauce reduces twice.
"The liquid part of drained tomatoes"The juice that separates from chopped fresh or canned tomatoes, not tomato puree. It gives acidity and gloss without turning the sauce red; Ranhofer specifies no quantity.
Dry mushroomsNineteenth-century dried cepes or field mushrooms. Soak 15-20 grams in warm water for 30 minutes, chop, and add both mushrooms and the strained soaking liquid to the reduction; the grit settles and the top three-quarters pours off clean.
Clove of garlic or olive shapeTwo classic turned shapes: the clove-of-garlic more tapered, the olive rounder, both a few centimetres long. Peel and seed the cucumbers first, cut into batons, then pare the edges round with a paring knife.
TammyA fine worsted cloth the sauce was wrung through by two cooks. A fine chinois pressed with a ladle, or a chinois lined with a double layer of muslin, gives the same result. Strain before the cucumbers go in, never after.
White brothSimply unbrowned stock, veal or chicken, or salted water with a knob of butter if you have none to spare.
Yield and serviceRanhofer gives no yield and no serving suggestion; the recipe assumes a large-batch kitchen. Scaled to about 500 ml of finished sauce with two medium cucumbers, it would dress six to eight portions.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and its sauce chapters are essentially the Careme-descended French repertoire as practised in an American grand restaurant: a mother sauce held in bulk, then a hundred named variations built on it to order. The name Zuchette is not documented in the standard French sauce lists and Ranhofer gives no explanation; one might guess at an Italianate diminutive for a small gourd, which would fit the cucumber garnish, but restaurant sauces of the period were just as often named for a guest, a supplier or a private room. What is certain is the method: the identity of the sauce lies entirely in its garnish, and the labour of turning cucumbers into uniform olives is exactly the kind of brigade work that a house like Delmonico's could afford and a home cook could not.