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Champagne Sauce
Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a saucepan, add one sliced carrot, half a sliced onion, one ounce ham cut in small pieces, a bay leaf, one sprig thyme and one clove; gently brown ten minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Pour in a pint champagne cider and let reduce until nearly dry. Pour in one gill demi-glace half gill tomato sauce, and boil ten minutes. Strain the sauce through a Chinese strainer and use as directed.
A classical compound sauce built on demi-glace, of the type that assumes a professional kitchen already has the base stock on hand. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the ingredients need translating before you start.
- Champagne ciderNot champagne, and not modern sweet apple juice. Champagne cider was a sparkling hard cider, sold as a cheaper stand-in for wine; sweetness varied by maker. A dry sparkling hard cider is the closest match; a dry white wine works if you accept a different sauce.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. So the sauce starts from one gill demi-glace plus half a gill tomato sauce, six fluid ounces in all, boiled down to less. A pint of cider is 16 fl oz.
- Demi-glaceA brown veal stock reduced with espagnole sauce, glossy and strongly gelatinous when cold. Commercial demi-glace concentrates are sold in tubs and pots; dilute to the manufacturer's strength rather than using the concentrate straight, which will make the sauce salty and gluey once reduced further.
- Reduce until nearly dryThis is the hinge. The cider must go almost to a syrupy film on the pan bottom before the demi-glace goes in, so its acidity and fruit concentrate instead of thinning the sauce. Stopping early leaves a watery, sharp result that no amount of later boiling will fix.
- The browning stageTen minutes of gentle browning on carrot, onion and ham is meant to colour, not scorch. Any burnt sugar in the vegetables carries straight through the reduction into the finished sauce.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. Press the solids firmly with a ladle to extract the liquid. A fine sieve lined with a single layer of muslin does the same job.
- Tomato sauceIn this period a tomato sauce meant a cooked, sieved, lightly seasoned kitchen preparation, not a jarred pasta sauce. Passata simmered briefly and reduced is nearer the mark than anything with garlic and herbs in it.
- Yield and seasoningWell under a cup after straining. The recipe gives no salt; the demi-glace and ham may supply enough, so taste at the end and correct.
Champagne sauce belongs to the classical French repertoire of small brown sauces, the family in which a mirepoix and an aromatic wine reduction are finished with the mother sauce espagnole in its reduced form, demi-glace. The wine names the sauce, and the substitution here of champagne cider for actual champagne is worth noting, though the recipe itself says nothing about why it was made. The ounce of ham, the bay leaf, thyme and single clove are the standard aromatic set of the period, and the instruction to "use as directed" suggests that the sauce was meant to be called upon by name from elsewhere.