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Bordelaise Sauce
Finely chop six small, very sound, peeled shallots and place them in a small saucepan with a gill claret, and let reduce on the fire to half the quantity. Then pour in half a gill hot tomato sauce and one gill hot demi-glace. Season with a light saltspoon salt and a very little cayenne pepper and let boil very slowly for eight minutes. Shift the pan on the corner of the range, then add, little by little, half an ounce good butter, and continue mixing until the butter is thoroughly dissolved.
Prepare a beef marrow as per the following recipe. Thoroughly drain and add it to the Bordelaise sauce; gently mix and serve as directed.
A classical red-wine and marrow sauce, written for a kitchen that always had demi-glace on hand. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes if the base is ready.
- GillsA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz. So: half a cup of claret reduced to a quarter cup, a quarter cup of tomato sauce, half a cup of demi-glace. That comes to about a cup before the eight-minute boil reduces it further; the recipe gives no serving count.
- ClaretThe period term for dry red Bordeaux. Any dry, moderately tannic red works; avoid anything oaky or sweet, since reducing it by half concentrates whatever is there.
- Demi-glaceBrown veal stock and espagnole sauce reduced together — the backbone of the sauce, not an optional flavouring. Good jarred or frozen demi-glace is sold now; if you substitute plain reduced stock, the sauce will taste thin and will not coat.
- SaltspoonAbout a quarter teaspoon. Salt at the end instead, once the demi-glace has reduced, or the finished sauce will be over-seasoned.
- The corner of the rangeThat means off direct heat, at a temperature below a simmer. It matters: the butter is being emulsified in, and if the sauce boils after the butter goes in it will break and turn greasy. Add it in small pieces, swirling.
- Beef marrowAsk a butcher for split marrow bones or cut lengths. Soak in cold salted water several hours to draw out blood, push the marrow out whole, then poach in barely simmering salted water two to three minutes until just translucent. Hard boiling melts it into the pot.
- FinishingFold the drained marrow in off the heat and serve at once — it is dice of soft fat, and stirring or reheating will dissolve it into the sauce.
- Tomato sauceA hotel-kitchen touch rather than a strict classical requirement. If yours is sweet or heavily seasoned, use less; the sauce should read as wine and beef, not tomato.
Bordelaise takes its name from Bordeaux and, by convention, from the region's red wine: shallots reduced in claret, mounted into a brown sauce, and garnished with poached marrow. The formula belongs to the codified French repertoire that ran professional kitchens on both sides of the Atlantic around 1900, where a cook did not build a sauce from scratch but drew on a standing pot of demi-glace and finished it to order — which is why this recipe assumes the hardest component already exists. Marrow gives richness without extra fat in the pan, and the pairing with grilled beef, entrecôte in particular, is the classical service. The tomato sauce here is a variation rather than the strict textbook version.