No. 620

Poivrade Sauce

Sauce Poivrade

Put into a bowl one gill of espagnole sauce (No. 414), add to it twice its quantity of oil, some Chili and tarragon vinegar, pepper and salt; beat the whole together with a whisk and throw in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley and some finely chopped blanched shallots.

← No. 619 Persillade Sauce Cold Sauces No. 621 Polish Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold vinaigrette built on a base of brown sauce, which gives it body and depth that oil and vinegar alone cannot. Nothing here is difficult, but the espagnole has to be in the right state before you start whisking.

The measurementsA gill is half a cup, so you need 1/2 cup espagnole and 1 cup oil. The vinegars, pepper and salt are left to judgment; start with about 2 tablespoons of vinegar total, split between the chili and the tarragon, and correct after the oil is in.
The hinge: the state of the espagnoleA good espagnole is gelatinous and sets firm when chilled. The recipe says nothing about its temperature, but since everything else here is cold, it is worth bringing the espagnole to a loose, barely fluid state before whisking in the oil so it does not stay in lumps; keeping it no warmer than cool room temperature will help the finished sauce hold together.
Espagnole (No. 414)Ranhofer's espagnole is a long-simmered brown sauce, a brown roux moistened with stock and cooked down with aromatic vegetables. A well-reduced homemade brown stock, thickened lightly and thoroughly chilled, stands in for it; commercial gravy bases are too salty and too thin to carry this sauce.
Chili vinegarA nineteenth-century pantry staple: wine vinegar steeped with dried hot chilies for a week or two. Any hot-pepper vinegar works, or add a pinch of cayenne to plain wine vinegar. Tarragon vinegar is still sold and is worth using rather than substituting.
Blanched shallotsBlanching means a brief plunge in boiling water, then draining and drying. It takes the raw bite out and keeps the shallot from dominating a sauce that is served cold, where harsh flavors read louder.
The oilThe recipe says only 'oil'; olive oil is the likely reading. Use one with flavor but not a peppery finishing oil, which will fight the chili vinegar.
It will separateThis is a loose emulsion with no egg or mustard to hold it. Make it within an hour of serving and re-whisk just before it goes to the table.
Yield and servingAbout a cup and a half, enough for six to eight. It belongs with cold roast game, venison, cold beef or tongue, and in Ranhofer's kitchen would have gone out on the same buffet as the other cold sauces in this section.

A Little History

Poivrade takes its name from poivre, pepper, and in the classical French repertoire it is normally a hot sauce: espagnole sharpened with vinegar and crushed peppercorns, finished with game trimmings and served with venison and hare. What Charles Ranhofer sets down here is the cold cousin, in which the same brown-sauce-and-vinegar idea is loosened with twice its volume of oil and turned into something closer to a heavy vinaigrette for the cold buffet. That such a sauce needs half a cup of finished espagnole to make at all says a good deal about the kitchen it came from: Ranhofer ran Delmonico's in New York for some thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) assumes a brigade with brown sauce, glaze and stock standing ready at all hours. The cold sauces in this chapter are largely offshoots of the hot ones, which is why they appear as one-paragraph cross-references rather than full recipes.