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Fermiere Sauce
Neatly peel and finely chop four sound shallots, and hash also very finely half an ounce very lean, raw bacon; place in a small saucepan with a teaspoon melted butter and brown for five minutes, lightly stirring meanwhile; drain the fat from the pan; add a gill demi-glace half gill tomato sauce, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and a tablespoon of capers; lightly mix and boil for five minutes. Remove and use as stated.
A short compound sauce in the classic French manner: an aromatic base of shallot and bacon, moistened with demi-glace and tomato, finished with capers and parsley. It comes together in about fifteen minutes provided the demi-glace is already on hand.
- The hinge: the demi-glaceEverything depends on it. Demi-glace is espagnole combined with brown veal stock and reduced until it coats a spoon, and no stock cube or gravy granule stands in for it. Use a good commercial demi-glace concentrate or reduce 2 cups of dark veal or beef stock to about 1/2 cup before you begin.
- A gillIn American measure, half a cup, 4 fl oz (British books reckon a gill at 5 fl oz). So roughly 1/2 cup demi-glace and 1/4 cup tomato sauce.
- Tomato sauceNot pasta sauce and not ketchup. The book means the classic sauce tomate: tomatoes cooked down with a little mirepoix and stock until smooth and thick. Passata simmered briefly with a knob of butter is the nearest quick substitute.
- The baconHalf an ounce of very lean raw bacon is a scant tablespoon, chopped fine. Unsmoked streaky bacon or lardons are closer to the original French poitrine than heavily smoked supermarket bacon, which will dominate a sauce this small.
- Browning and drainingFive minutes over moderate heat is enough to soften the shallots and render the bacon without scorching either; burnt shallot turns the whole sauce bitter. Tipping off the fat before the liquid goes in keeps the finished sauce from breaking into a greasy film.
- CapersRinse brined capers and pat them dry, or the sauce turns sharp. Salt-packed capers need a longer soak. Add them as directed rather than earlier, since a long boil dulls them.
- Yield and servingSomewhat under 3/4 cup once the five-minute boil has reduced it; enough for about four small portions. It suits grilled or pan-fried red meat, calf's liver or kidneys — the "use as stated" refers to whichever dish sent you here.
Fermière means "farmer's wife," one of a family of French garnish and sauce names — bonne femme, paysanne, boulangère — that signalled rustic, kitchen-garden associations even when the sauce itself rested on a professional brown stock. The pattern here is orthodox: a shallot and bacon base, a measured quantity of demi-glace cut with tomato, and a sharp finishing element, in this case capers. That combination sits in the same family as sauce piquante, which uses a similar shallot-and-demi-glace base with a sharp garnish. Its appearance in a general cook book of this period reflects how far the classical system of mother sauces and their derivatives had been absorbed into English-language household writing — though such books seldom acknowledged that the home cook was unlikely to have demi-glace standing ready, as a restaurant kitchen did.