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Tarragon Sauce
Place one and a half gills demi-glace in a saucepan with two tablespoons sherry and the leaves from two branches tarragon; mix a little, slowly boil for ten minutes and use as required.
A three-line classical sauce that assumes you already have demi-glace on the stove. Everything depends on the quality of that base.
- GillsA gill is 4 fl oz (half a cup) in American measure but 5 fl oz in British, so one and a half gills is somewhere between about 180 and 215 ml. Ten minutes at a slow boil in an uncovered pan will reduce that noticeably, perhaps by a third.
- Demi-glaceIn a book of this vintage this means the classical sauce: brown stock reduced with espagnole until it coats a spoon. Commercial demi-glace concentrates work, but dilute them a little more than the package says, since this recipe reduces further. Unsalted or lightly salted stock is essential given the reduction.
- Two branches of tarragonRead this as two good sprigs, giving roughly two tablespoons of loosely packed leaves. Dried tarragon is a poor substitute here; use about a teaspoon if you must, and add it at the start so it has time to soften.
- Slowly boilThe instruction is doing real work. A bare simmer with the pan uncovered concentrates the glace and draws the anise note out of the tarragon; a hard boil will make the sauce salty and dull the herb.
- The sherryDry sherry, not cream or sweet. Ten minutes of simmering cooks off most of the raw alcohol and leaves the nuttiness that distinguishes sherry from white wine here.
- Straining and finishingClassical versions of this sauce strain out the spent leaves and add a few fresh chopped ones off the heat for colour and aroma. A tablespoon of cold butter swirled in at the end will give it gloss, though the original does not call for it.
- YieldRoughly 1/2 cup finished sauce depending on how far it reduces, enough for two to four portions of grilled beef, veal or chicken. It thickens as it cools; loosen with a spoonful of stock if it sets too firm.
Tarragon sauce belongs to the family of small brown sauces that French professional kitchens built on a single mother sauce, and its brevity here is a sign of the audience: a cook who reaches for demi-glace by the gill needs no explanation of what demi-glace is. Tarragon was a prominent herb in French cookery of the period, appearing in bearnaise, in flavoured vinegar, and in poulet a l'estragon. The pairing with sherry rather than white wine suits the richer, meat-based service of the era, where such a sauce would be spooned over a grilled entrecote or a tournedos.