Espagnole Sauce
Soak one tablespoonful of gelatine in one half of a cupful of strong stock or consomme; put four tablespoonfuls of butter in a saucepan and when hot, add two tablespoonfuls of chopped onion, one tablespoonful of chopped ham, one tablespoonful chopped celery and one tablespoonful of carrot. Brown slowly, add two tablespoonfuls of flour, brown again, stirring constantly. Add one pint of consomme and when smooth and thick, add one bay leaf, two sprigs of parsley, three cloves, one-half teaspoonful of salt and quarter of pepper. Boil for five minutes, then cover closely; draw off to the side of the fire and simmer slowly for two hours. Add the soaked gelatine; let stand for twenty minutes longer, skim and strain. If too thick, dilute with a little consomme. For a piquante sauce, simmer together half a cupful of vinegar and one chopped onion, until the vinegar is almost evaporated. Add one pint of espagnole, two tablespoonfuls of chopped pickle and capers and one teaspoonful of chopped parsley, one tablespoonful of lemon juice.
A gelatine-boosted brown sauce of the late-Victorian type, meant to nap game and to set into a glossy coating as it cools. Nothing here is unsafe; the work is all in the long, patient simmer.
- The hinge: brown the mirepoix slowlyMost of the colour of the finished sauce comes from browning the butter, vegetables and flour before liquid goes in. Take the roux to a deep nut brown over moderate heat, stirring, and stop short of any acrid smell — a scorched roux cannot be rescued and will taint two hours of simmering.
- "Draw off to the side of the fire"On a coal range this meant moving the pan to a cooler zone. On a modern hob, use the lowest setting or slide the covered pan into a 300F oven for the two hours; you want an occasional bubble, not a rolling boil.
- Consommé and stockThe recipe assumes a clear, well-flavoured homemade brown stock. Low-sodium beef or veal stock works; if you use a commercial concentrate, hold back the half teaspoon of salt until the sauce has reduced, or the two-hour simmer will concentrate it past the point of use.
- The gelatineOne tablespoon of powdered gelatine is roughly one and a third envelopes — a generous amount, and deliberately so, since the sauce was expected to cling and to jelly lightly when cold. Soften it in cold or barely warm stock and stir it in off the heat; prolonged boiling weakens the set. Halve it if you want a sauce that stays fluid on the plate.
- Chopped hamA single tablespoon of raw or lightly cured ham, cut small, is there for savour, not for meatiness. Prosciutto trim, pancetta or a scrap of bacon all do the job.
- Skim and strainSkim fat from the surface throughout the simmer, not only at the end, and strain through a fine sieve pressing lightly on the solids. The finished sauce should coat a spoon and pour clean, with no fleck of vegetable in it.
- YieldAbout a pint after straining and reduction — enough for six to eight servings as a sauce for roast or braised game. It keeps three or four days refrigerated and will set firm; reheat gently and thin with stock.
- The piquante variationReduce the vinegar with the onion until the pan is nearly dry, or the sharpness will dominate. The recipe adds the pickle, capers, parsley and lemon juice last; adding them off the heat will keep them bright rather than stewed.
Espagnole is one of the sauces codified in nineteenth-century French kitchens as a "mother" sauce — a brown foundation from which piquante, Robert, bordelaise and dozens of others are built by additions rather than made from scratch. Its name means simply "Spanish," and the usual explanation, traditional rather than documented, credits Spanish cooks in the French court with enriching the brown sauce, often with tomato; Carême's writings gave the sauce its enduring formal place. The gelatine here reflects the period's taste for sauces that gleamed on the platter and held their shape on cold meat.