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Sauce Supreme
Cut off the head of chicken, neatly clean the carcass and cut the bones into small pieces. Place them in a saucepan with a sliced onion, the white of one sliced leek, one each branch parsley, chervil and celery, one quart water, one gill white wine, a half teaspoon salt, saltspoon cayenne, half saltspoon grated nutmeg, and let gently boil for forty-five minutes, being careful to skim off the scum once in a while. Mix in a saucepan an ounce butter with an ounce and a half flour and heat for half minute. Strain half the broth through a cheesecloth into this pan, mix well until it comes to a boil, then let reduce to half the quantity, lightly mixing at bottom once in a while. Dilute one egg yolk with a gill cream and add to the sauce, mix while heating for five minutes, press the sauce through a double cheesecloth into a sauce bowl and serve.
A classic velouté finished with an egg-and-cream liaison, built on a quick chicken bone broth. The whole thing hinges on the last five minutes: once the yolk goes in, the sauce must never boil.
- The liaison is the hingeAfter the yolk and cream are stirred in, hold the sauce below a simmer — around 180F — for those five minutes. A boil will scramble the yolk into grains, and no amount of straining will make it smooth again.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so the wine and the cream are half a cup each. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, which makes the cayenne 1/4 tsp and the nutmeg a scant 1/8 tsp.
- "Cut off the head of chicken"The instruction assumes a bird bought whole, head still on. Start instead with the picked carcass of a roast chicken, or about 1 1/2 lb of wings and backs; add the neck if you have it for body.
- Roux proportionsOne ounce butter to one and a half ounces flour is 2 tablespoons butter to a slightly generous 1/3 cup flour — a dry, tight roux by modern habit. Cook it the stated half minute only; this is a white roux and should not colour.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh outside spring markets. A few sprigs of tarragon plus extra parsley gives a closer result than dried chervil, which has almost no aroma left.
- The reductionHalf the broth is somewhat under 2 cups after the 45-minute boil, reduced by half again after thickening. Expect a good stretch at a bare simmer, stirring the bottom often — a floury sauce scorches quietly before you smell it.
- StrainingPressing through doubled cheesecloth removes any grain and leaves the sauce smooth. A fine chinois with a ladle worked against it does the same job faster.
- YieldAbout a cup of finished sauce, enough for four servings of poached chicken, sweetbreads or eggs. It does not reheat well; make it as the dish goes to the table.
Sauce suprême is one of the small, rich derivatives of velouté that French professional cooking codified in the nineteenth century: a light chicken stock thickened with blond roux, reduced, then enriched with cream. Escoffier's later, more austere version drops the egg yolk and leans on cream and reduction alone, so the yolk liaison here marks the recipe as belonging to the older tradition it came out of.