Everything about Espagnole totally explained
In cooking,
espagnole sauce is one of the
mother sauces that are the basis of sauce-making in classic
French cooking.
Auguste Escoffier codified the recipe in the late
19th century, which is still followed today.
Even though
espagnole is the French word for
Spanish, the sauce has little connection with Spanish cuisine. According to Louis Diat, the creator of
vichyssoise and the author of the classic
Gourmet's Basic French Cookbook: "There is a story that explains why the most important basic brown sauce in French cuisine is called
sauce espagnole, or Spanish sauce. According to the story, the Spanish cooks of
Louis XIII's bride, Anne, helped to prepare their wedding feast, and insisted upon improving the rich brown sauce of France with Spanish
tomatoes. This new sauce was an instant success, and was gratefully named in honor of its creators."
The basic method of making espagnole is to prepare a very dark brown
roux, to which are added several liters of
veal stock or water, along with 10–15 kg (20–30 lb) of browned bones, pieces of
beef, many pounds of
vegetables, and various
seasonings. This blend is allowed to slowly reduce while being frequently skimmed. The classical recipe calls for additional veal stock to be added as the liquid gradually reduces but today water is generally used instead.
Tomato sauce is added towards the end of the process, and the sauce is further reduced.
Espagnole has a strong taste and is rarely used directly on food. As a
mother sauce, however, it then serves as the starting point for many
derivative sauces, such as
Sauce Africaine, Sauce
Bigarade,
Sauce Bourguignonne, Sauce aux
Champignons,
Sauce Charcutiere,
Sauce Chasseur,
Sauce Chevreuil and
Demi-glace. There are hundreds of other derivatives in the classic French repertoire.
A typical espagnole recipe takes many hours or even several days to make, and produces four to five quarts of sauce. In most derivative recipes, however, one cup of espagnole is more than enough, so that the basic recipe will yield enough sauce for 16 to 20 meals. Frozen in small quantities, espagnole will keep practically indefinitely.
Escoffier included a recipe for a
Lenten espagnole sauce, using fish stock and mushrooms, in the
Guide Culinaire but doubted its necessity.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Espagnole'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://espagnole_sauce.totallyexplained.com">Espagnole sauce Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
