Improvising Brown Sauces

When preparing a classic French sauce, the skillful saucier constantly adjusts the sauce’s flavor, consistency, and color. Several brown sauce methods have been presented in this chapter, including classic demi-glace, glace de viande, and unbound versions. Experienced sauciers rarely adhere to one method alone when constructing a sauce and will usually prepare a sauce using a combination of methods, sometimes inventing and improvising as they go along.

As an example, consider a sauce hussarde. The flavor base is prepared by gently sweating onions and shallots in butter and then adding white wine, which is reduced by half. If, at this point, the chef has on hand a full-flavored brown stock but no demi-glace, he or she could add flour to the sweating onion-shallot mixture to ensure that the sauce quickly develops a lightly thickened consistency. If the chef wants to avoid flour, and if time and budget permit, he or she may decide to reduce the brown stock until it has the consistency of a demi-glace. Or he or she might decide, after adding the stock, to thicken the sauce with a little starch such as arrowroot, combined first with cold water, or with a hydrocolloid or two, blended in while hot or cold, depending on the hydrocolloid(s).