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Salmi Sauce
Finely slice one onion, three shallots, one carrot and two medium, fresh mushrooms. Place in a saucepan with a half pound any kind of game bones, a half ounce butter, and brown for ten minutes, stirring once in a while. Add a teaspoon crushed black pepper, a half teaspoon salt, bay leaf, sprig thyme, clove and branch chervil. Pour in a half gill port or sherry, let briskly boil for five minutes, then pour in a gill demi-glace and a half gill water. Mix well, slowly boil for twenty minutes, skim fat off surface of sauce, strain sauce through Chinese strainer into a bowl, then through cheesecloth into a small saucepan, and serve as required.
A classic brown game sauce, built on demi-glace rather than thickened from scratch, and intended to be made in the half-hour after the birds are jointed. The instructions are complete but assume a professional larder.
- GillsAn American gill is 4 fl oz, half a cup (a British gill is 5 fl oz). Taking the American measure, half a gill of port is 1/4 cup and a gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup, so about a cup of liquid goes in and rather less comes out after the twenty-minute boil — a small sauce, enough for a couple of servings of game.
- Demi-glace is the whole recipeEverything else is flavouring. Without a real reduced brown stock the sauce will be thin and sour from the wine. A good shop-bought demi-glace concentrate, or a strong veal stock reduced by half, is the honest substitute; a stock cube is not.
- Game bonesThe carcasses of whatever bird or hare you are serving — pheasant, partridge, duck, wood pigeon, rabbit. Chop them small so the half pound browns rather than steams. Poultry bones will work but give a flatter, less resinous sauce.
- Brown properlyTen minutes over moderate heat with only half an ounce of butter is tight. Use a wide pan, let the bones and vegetables take real colour, and scrape the fond up when the wine goes in; that fond is where the depth comes from.
- A teaspoon of crushed pepperThat is a genuinely peppery sauce by modern taste, and deliberately so in a salmi. Crush it coarsely and add it with the aromatics as directed rather than at the end, so it infuses rather than bites.
- Chinese strainerA chinois — the conical fine-mesh strainer. The double straining, first through the cone and then through cheesecloth, is what gives the glossy, particle-free finish; skipping the second pass leaves grit from the crushed pepper.
- Skim seriouslyGame bones and butter throw a good deal of fat. Pull the pan half off the burner so the simmer runs to one side and the fat collects on the other, then lift it off with a spoon before straining.
- ChervilSold fresh only sporadically and it fades fast. A little flat-leaf parsley with a few tarragon leaves is the nearest approximation; dried chervil contributes almost nothing.
A salmi (from the French salmigondis, an old word for a hotchpotch of meats) is a two-stage game dish: the bird is roasted until barely done, carved, and the pieces finished in a sauce built from the carcass and trimmings. This entry is that sauce alone, filed as a component in the French manner, which is why it ends