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Sauce, Belmont
Cut an ounce raw lean veal and a half ounce raw lean ham in very small pieces and place in a saucepan. Clip off tails and peel six large fresh mushrooms, add trimmings to saucepan, also three tarragon leaves and two finely sliced shallots, pour in a teaspoon fresh melted butter and cook on fire for five minutes, stirring meanwhile. Pour in a gill white wine, let reduce to a glaze, then pour in two tablespoons Madeira wine, one tablespoon truffle liquor, one and a half gills demi-glace a half gill broth, and lightly mix. Let slowly cook for twenty minutes, skimming off scum once in a while, then keep hot on a corner of range.
Finely slice the six fresh mushrooms, place in a small saucepan with a teaspoon melted butter and cook for five minutes, tossing them meanwhile, add a red Spanish sweet pepper cut in very small pieces and a very finely sliced truffle. Strain sauce into this pan, add a saltspoon each salt and cayenne. Mix well, briskly cook for five minutes, add little by little a half ounce fresh butter, continually mixing while adding, then use as directed.
A classic garnished demi-glace in the Escoffier mould: a small meat-and-aromatic infusion, reduced twice, strained, then rebuilt with mushrooms, pepper and truffle and finished with cold butter. The whole thing hinges on the demi-glace, which the book assumes you keep on hand.
- Demi-glace firstA gill and a half is about 3/4 cup of finished demi-glace — brown stock reduced with espagnole until it coats a spoon. Without it there is no sauce; a good jarred veal demi-glace or a heavily reduced homemade brown stock is the practical substitute, and thin canned "beef broth" is not.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is 1/2 cup (4 fl oz), so a gill of white wine is 1/2 cup and the half gill of broth is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is roughly 1/4 teaspoon — use a good deal less than that of cayenne unless you want the pepper forward.
- Truffle liquorThis is the liquid from a tin of preserved truffles, not a liqueur. If you are using a fresh truffle there is none; substitute a tablespoon of Madeira or simply omit it rather than reaching for truffle oil, which is aromatised and will dominate.
- Red Spanish sweet pepperA jarred piquillo or roasted pimiento, drained and diced very small. It goes in for colour and sweetness, not heat.
- "Cook on fire" and "corner of range"Medium heat for the initial sweat, and the holding place is the coolest spot on a coal range — the equivalent is the lowest burner setting or a warm spot off the heat while you cook the mushrooms.
- The butter finishThe half ounce (1 tablespoon) of butter added little by little is a monter au beurre. Keep the pan below a simmer while whisking it in and serve promptly; if the sauce boils after the butter goes in it will break and turn greasy.
- Skim, then strainThe twenty-minute simmer is where the veal, ham and mushroom trimmings give up their flavour, so skim it honestly and press the solids in the strainer to get everything out. The trimmings are discarded; the solids in the finished sauce are the six sliced caps, plus the diced sweet pepper and the sliced truffle.
- YieldRoughly a cup of finished sauce — enough for four servings of tournedos, sweetbreads or chicken breast. It does not reheat well once buttered, so make it to be used.
Sauces named for hotels, restaurants and patrons are the fingerprints of the late nineteenth-century grande cuisine kitchen, where a house sauce was a form of advertising; the Belmont name in an American book of this vintage points to the New York hotel and racing family, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. Structurally the sauce is a textbook derivative of espagnole: brown stock reduced to demi-glace, flavoured with a mirepoix of veal and ham, sharpened with wine and Madeira, then garnished — the garnish is what earns the proper name. The sauce draws on truffle in two forms, the liquor as well as a very finely sliced truffle, and the "red Spanish sweet pepper" may reflect the growing availability of jarred pimientos in American kitchens at the turn of the century.