In their book La Grande cuisine illustratede , Prosper Salles and Prosper Montagné, published in 1900, evoke this poor man's sauce in these elegant terms: “this sauce belongs to ancient cuisine. It's basically just a hot or Devil sauce. Some very old culinary authors indicate a connection to grated bread or breadcrumbs .

A great classic

This sauce is indeed old and is also mentioned already in 1739 in Les Dons de Comus by François Marin, maître d'hôtel to Marshal de Soubise. Some say that it even goes back to the Romans with other variations.

With or without brown roux

In this recipe presented here the sauce is bound by a brown roux. We found other old recipes without this brown roux and focusing on the aromas of just chopped spring onion, onion and shallot - depending on the region and time - simply blanched in vinegar, with an addition of broth and optional breadcrumbs.

We favor this recipe below for poor-man sauce for meats such as veal's head and it is also what Alexandre Dumas recommends in his Grand dictionary of cuisine (1873). For our part, we indicate to you the variant mentioned in the previous paragraph for other meats such as a Viennese-style veal escalope , a pork chop , poultry such as pretty farm turkey escalopes or to accompany seafood (oysters , etc) or even some steamed potatoes.

Ingredients

• 50 cl of broth or light veal stock
• 50 g brown roux (25g churned butter , 25g flour)
• 3 spoonfuls of vinegar
• a large chopped shallot
• half spoonful of chopped chives
• half spoonful of chopped parsley
• 1 half spoonful of blond breadcrumbs
• freshly ground pepper

Preparation

1. Prepare 50 grams of brown roux with 25g of butter and 25g of flour. Melt the butter without coloring over moderate heat then add the flour all at once. Mix well for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Continue until you obtain a ripe wheat color for 5 to 10 minutes. Let cool.
2. Moisten the brown roux off the heat with 50 centimeters of ordinary broth or light veal stock. Add three spoonfuls of vinegar. Mix everything together and cook, stirring, for ten minutes.
3. In a separate saucepan, blanch the chopped shallot and deglaze with a touch of vinegar. Reserve.
4. At the last moment, add the blanched shallot to the base, half a spoonful of chopped chives, half a spoonful of chopped parsley, a spoonful and a half of blond breadcrumbs, and season with a little ground pepper.

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