Page:Escoffier - A Guide to Modern Cookery.djvu/47

 27—ALLEMANDE SAUCE OR THICKENED VELOUTÉ

Allemande Sauce is not, strictly speaking, a basic sauce. However, it is so often resorted to in the preparation of other sauces that I think it necessary to give it after the Veloutés, from which it is derived.


 * The yolks of 5 eggs.

1 pint of cold white stock.

1 quart of Velouté, well despumated.

½ the juice of a lemon.

¼ pint of mushroom liquor.

Mode of Procedure.—Put the various ingredients in a thickbottomed sauté-pan and mix them carefully. Then put the pan on an open fire, and stir the sauce with a metal spatula, lest it burn at the bottom. When the sauce has been reduced to about one quart, add one-third pint of fresh cream to it, and reduce further for a few minutes. It should then be passed through a fine strainer into a tureen and kept moving until quite cold.

Prepared thus, the Allemande Sauce is ready for the preparation of the smaller sauces. Butter must only be added at the very last moment, for if it were buttered any earlier it would most surely turn. The same injunction holds good with this sauce when it is to be served in its original state; it should then receive a small addition of cream, and be buttered so that it may attain its required delicacy; but this addition of butter and cream ought only to be made at the last moment, and away from the fire. When a thick sauce has any fat substance added to it, it cannot be exposed to a higher temperature than 140 degrees Fahrenheit without risking decomposition.

28—BÉCHAMEL SAUCE


 * 1 lb. of white roux.

4½ quarts of boiling milk.

½ lb. of lean veal.

⅔ oz. of salt, 1 pinch of mignonette, and grated nutmeg, and 1 small sprig of thyme.

1 minced onion.

Preparation.—Pour the boiling milk on the roux, which should be almost cold, and whisk it well so as to avoid lumps. Let it boil, then cook on the side of the fire. Meanwhile the lean veal should have been cut into small cubes, and fried with butter in a saucepan, together with the minced onion. When the veal has stiffened without becoming coloured, it is added to the Béchamel, together with salt and the other aromatics. Let the sauce stew for about one hour in all, and then