The same traits are abundantly manifested in the making of sauces.
While Dumas attributed the culinary superiority of the French to their
bouillon, George H. Ellwanger, who has written an entertaining book on
"The Pleasures of the Table," declares that "the supreme triumph of the
French cuisine consists in its sauces."
Many of the French gourmets and chefs have held the same view, and
undoubtedly more inventive skill has been shown, and more reputations
have been made, in the realm of sauces than in any other department of
the art of cooking.
Recipes for eighty-one of the best French sauces are given in "L'Art
du Bien Manger," and two hundred and forty-six sauces are described in
Charles Ranhofer's "The Epicurean." Perhaps the number of possible
sauces is not as large as that of the soups; yet there is ample scope
still for inventive genius.
Not only men but cities have been made famous by a sauce. In the
restaurants of Paris and all over Europe, in fact, Rouen duck is often
on the bill of fare. But as Lieut.-Col. Newnham-Davis says in "The
Gourmet's Guide to Europe," "the Rouen duck is not any particular breed
of duck, though the good people of Rouen will probably stone you if you
assert this. It is simply a roan duck. The rich sauce which forms part
of the dish was, however, invented at Rouen."
It was with a duck sauce that one of the French restaurateurs of our
time won fame and fortune. For a number of years every American and
Englishman in Paris who could afford it, went to the Tour d'Argent to
eat a duck as prepared by Frédéric Delair. He used two ducks for each
order. One of them, well-cooked, was for the meat, while the other,
quite rare (or under-done, as the English say) was put into a silver
turnscrew and had all its juices--including that of the liver--squeezed
out. These juices make a sauce which I have eaten with enjoyment and
impunity; but I have been told by a physician at Lyons that some
persons are made ill by it, owing, apparently, to some injurious
quality in raw duck-livers.
[Illustration: The "Tour d'Argent" and Frédéric Delair]
Most of the Paris restaurants, now that Frédéric is no more, have
their silver turnscrew, and they do not feel guilty of plagiarism, for
Frédéric did not really originate this trick but adapted it from the
practice of French peasants who tried to get as much juice as possible
out of their tough and skinny ducks by smashing the carcasses with
stones.
Already in the middle ages the _saucier_, or saucemaker, was the
headman in the cuisine of French aristocrats.
The age of Carême (who wrote eloquently and lovingly about sauces)
was, as Ellwanger remarks, "the era of quintessences--of the _cuisine
classique_, when chemistry contributed new resources, and fish,
meats, and fowls were distilled, in order to add a heightened flavor
to the sauces and viands that their etherealized essences were to
accentuate. One thinks of Lucullus and Apicius, and of the 'exceeding
odoriferous and aromatical vapor' of the ovens of the artist mentioned
by Montaigne."
The most common ingredients used to make the savory and appetizing
French sauces are the yolks of eggs (raw or cooked), salt, pepper,
mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, tomatoes, bouillon, shallots, anchovies,
onions, garlic, carrots, olive oil, orange rind, truffles, cream,
mushrooms, pickles, wines, meat extracts, cayenne, and diverse aromatic
herbs. But the most important of all French sauces is melted French
butter--not "kitchen butter," but the fresh, fragrant product of the
creamery. With such butter, _and plenty of it_, gastronomic miracles
can be performed.
[Illustration: CARÊME]
There is a great deal of local Flavor in French sauces. Blindfold a
Parisian gourmet who knows his country, and place before him dishes
made after the fashions of different provinces, and he will tell you at
once the name of the town they smack of.
The coast towns enjoy special advantages in this respect, as they can
use diverse shellfish and other marine creatures peculiar to their
region to impart special overtones of flavor, so to speak, to their
sauces.
French enthusiasm over sauces reached its climax in the exclamation
that with sauce Robert a man might be pardoned for eating his own
grandfather!
Brillat-Savarin, like many of his countrymen, went too far when he
declared that "poultry is for cookery what canvas is to the painter."
No doubt, many of the sauces served with poultry in French restaurants
(each of which has its specialty, as it has in the line of fish sauces)
are delicious, yet good chickens, ducks, and turkeys, not to speak
of game birds, have flavors of their own which it is a barbarism to
disguise even with the noblest of sauces--except once in a while, for
the sake of variety. The way to cook any winged creature if you want
the most delicious flavor it can yield, is roasting _à la broche_.