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Piquante Sauce
Hash very fine six peeled, medium-sized sound shallots, and place them in a saucepan with a teaspoon melted butter; heat well without browning. Hash up very fine six sound gherkins, a good tablespoon sound capers, one clove of garlic, one teaspoon fresh parsley. Add all these to the pan, season with a saltspoon salt and a saltspoon white pepper. Moisten with two tablespoons sherry wine or the same quantity good vinegar if no sherry is at hand, one gill tomato sauce and one gill half glaze. Stir all well, let it gently reduce to one-half the quantity and serve.
A short French sauce piquante built on a meat glaze, written for a kitchen that already had stock reductions on hand. The whole thing takes ten minutes once the base is sorted.
- Half glazeThis is demi-glace: espagnole and brown stock reduced together until it coats a spoon. A good jarred or frozen demi-glace works, or reduce 2 cups of strong brown stock to 1/2 cup. Without it the sauce is thin and sharp, since it supplies most of the body and depth.
- A gillHalf a cup, so 1/2 cup tomato sauce and 1/2 cup half glaze. The tomato sauce meant here is a cooked, seasoned tomato sauce rather than raw purée or ketchup.
- SaltspoonAbout 1/4 teaspoon. Season lightly at this stage regardless, since reducing by half concentrates both the salt and the demi-glace, which is already salted.
- Sweat, do not brownThe instruction to heat the shallots "without browning" is the hinge. Browned shallot turns bitter against the vinegar and capers, and the finished sauce should taste sharp and clean, not scorched.
- Gherkins and capersUse cornichons in vinegar, not sweet pickles, and rinse salt-packed capers. If you want their bite to stay bright, hold back half the gherkin and stir it in at the end rather than through the whole reduction.
- Sherry or vinegarDry sherry, not cream sherry. The suggested substitution of plain vinegar in equal quantity makes a noticeably sharper sauce; wine vinegar is closer in spirit than distilled white.
- Reduction and yieldReducing about 1 1/4 cups by half gives roughly 2/3 cup of finished sauce, enough for four portions. Keep it at a bare simmer and stir, since tomato and glaze both catch on the bottom.
- ServingTraditionally poured over grilled or pan-fried pork chops, leftover boiled beef, kidneys or a plain roast. It is a strong, salty-sour sauce and wants a fatty cut to work against.
Sauce piquante is one of the standard small sauces of nineteenth-century French cookery: a shallot-and-vinegar reduction finished with brown sauce and sharpened with chopped gherkins and capers, conventionally classed alongside sauce Robert and the various "hachée" sauces of the same family. Its usual job in a professional kitchen was to make cold or reheated meat worth eating again. This version, from Alexander Filippini's International Cook Book, reflects the hotel practice Filippini learned at Delmonico's in New York, where a pot of half glaze stood ready and a sauce like this was a matter of chopping and a few minutes on the stove. The recipe adds, offhandedly, that vinegar may be used "if no sherry is at hand."