from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
Checking the wine to be used in the sauce! SaucesDéglacé, Réduction and Jus Corsé
The sauces in this post may be served with an entrée (the French first course), a plat principal (the main course), or a dessert. The names above do not refer to the ingredients, rather the method of preparation. Be aware that many French menus often contain words from the kitchen that often do not appear in travelers' French-English dictionaries.
Translating words from French menus to English.
Some words may confuse English speakers when encountered for the first time on a French menu. That was particularly true for those who, like me, tried to translate menu listings using English words that sounded similar. Most of these words came into English from the French when William the Conqueror and his barons brought their cooks with them to England in 1066. Since 1066, a great deal of time has passed and while the words owe their origins to French their English meanings have often changed.
Three of those words used for sauce have precise meanings, but without an explanation, they may confuse a diner. Some 40% of the English language has French roots, but we are often confused when faced with a seemingly irrational change in usage. Nevertheless, don’t blame the French. It’s the British who changed the meanings or didn’t keep up with changes in French cuisine.
Déglacé, Jus and Réduction on a French menu listing.
Menu dishes will often note that a sauce has been "deglazed" and or "reduced" or made with "Jus." However, the words' direct translations do not tell us, the average diner, very much. Cooks, both amateur and professional, know the meanings very well, The English word juice also came from old French jus, and so jus on a French menu may include other meanings besides fruit and vegetable juice.
Preparing a reduction with shallots
Photograph courtesy of Jon-Eric Melsæter
www.flickr.com/photos/jonmelsa/10583856636/
Déglace - To deglaze.
Many sauces begin with the natural juices from cooked dishes, including the bones, from meats, poultry, fish, and fresh or cooked fruits and vegetables. The untouched sauce from cooking will be called a jus, a suc, or a jus corsé. Then, when an additional flavor is added, the description of how it was flavored will be on the menu listing with the word déglace. The deglazing will bring all the flavors from the original juices, including those tasty bits that may have been stuck to the base of the pan.
Déglacé on French menus:
Le Filet
de Loup de Mer, Braisé, Déglacé de Vin
Blanc – A braised filet of European Sea Bass served with a deglazed sauce; the sauce has been made with
the fish’s cooking juices flavored with the addition of white wine. A great
deal of thought will have gone into choosing the right wine to
create the matching taste. Ask the waiter for more information on the wine
used.
N.B. The Loup de Mer, theEuropean Sea Bass is mostly on French menus as Bar, but in southern France it is called Loup.
Deglazing.
Photograph
courtesy of Cheryl DeWolfe
www.flickr.com/photos/dinnerseries/15789710686/
Poêlée de Saint-Jacques en Persillade
Déglacer Vinaigre de Xéres – The cooking juices of lightly
fried King scallops prepared
with chopped parsley and garlic, and flavored
with sherry vinegar.
You may be surprised to see Port, Madeira, Sherry, and
other imported wines on French menus, but they have been recognized for their
significant influence on French cuisine for over 200-years.
Supreme de Caille Déglacer au Vieux Banyuls - Breast of quail served with its natural cooking juices flavored with an aged Banyuls AOP wine. Banyuls AOP famous for its famous sweet wines, mostly reds, from the town of Banyuls sur Mer on France’s Mediterranean coast 25 km (16 miles) from the Spanish border. Banyuls will only occasionally be on the wine list, but they will be in most restaurants’ kitchens and used for a wide variety of sauces. In restaurants where Banyuls is on the wine list, it may accompany a cheese course or be offered as a dessert wine; that is an opportunity to try a Banyuls instead of a glass of port with which it has much in common. (Banyuls also have rosé and white wines). The European quail is a smaller cousin of the North-American quail, and the one on this menu is farm-raised.
Banyuls-sur-Mer
Photograph
courtesy of Jorge Franganillo
www.flickr.com/photos/franganillo/20603924884/
Magret de Canard Déglacé au Vinaigre de Framboise - Duck breast prepared and served with a sauce deglazed with raspberry vinegar. Duck nearly always works well when cooked with a fruit sauce and only rarely will that be a sweet fruit; here raspberry vinegar takes away the fruit’s natural sweetness.
Raspberry Vinegar
Photograph courtesy of Rhian
www.flickr.com/photos/rhian/2138548884/
Why the act of changing a flavor is also called deglazing in English, I do not know; however, in the French kitchen, tradition is tradition, and so it is déglacé. The addition of wine or another liquid to deglaze a sauce increases the volume, and that brings in the next part of this post, the réduction.
The Réduction - The Reduction
After creating a new sauce with a combination of the natural cooking juices and an added flavor, the chef may need to reduce the volume of the new sauce and thicken it to concentrate the flavor; that is the reduction.
In modern French cuisine, no good chef will thicken a sauce by adding flour. Adding flour may be quick and easy, but flour or cornflour changes the taste of a sauce. The thickening, the reduction, will be done by allowing the sauce to reach a low boil and evaporate on the stove.
Menu listings often appear on a menu using the words déglacé and or réduction in the title. Sometimes the two words becomes muddled; however, as long as we know the meaning, no harm is done.
The final taste is more important than the technical names used and most menus will note the wine, liquor, eau de vie, herbs, or fruits used to change the taste. They will have changed and concentrated the flavor of the original cooking juices, and a deglazed sauce has been created.
The final taste of the sauce is apparent when the sauce has been thickened, reduced in quantity, and the taste concentrated.
Fennel Crusted Lamb Sirloin,
Farm Fresh Grilled
Summer
Vegetable Ratatouille Crispy Parsnips, and a Bordelaise Reduction Sauce
www.flickr.com/photos/dinnerseries/5062734490/
The French diner is used to menu listings including the names of the herbs used, the method of cooking, and sometimes the name of the kitchen equipment used. In many cases local diners will already know the high standards of a particular product, even the name of the farm where the chickens, pigeons, oysters, or lambs were grown and so they may be included in a listing.
Réduction on French menus:
Le Filet de Lieu Noir Rôti et sa Réduction de Crème de Morilles – A filet of saithe, pollack in the USA. The fish will be roasted and served with a reduced and creamy sauce flavored with morel mushrooms. (The fish is also called Merluche in France).
Brussel sprouts drizzled with a balsamic
reduction
before roasting.
Photograph courtesy of Robert
Couse-Baker
www.flickr.com/photos/29233640@N07/49802274571/
Onglet de Bœuf de Salers,
Réduction de Bière à la Cerise - A hangar or skirt steak from the much-appreciated Salers beef.
The steak will have been grilled and served with the reduced sauce made with
a cherry-flavored beer. The cows
from the Salers cattle produce the milk for the Salers AOP and Cantal AOP cheeses, and so most of these steaks will have come from bulls or bullocks. The
beer used here is likely to be a Belgian Kriek cherry-flavored beer. The
Belgians have hundreds of beers, more than France has cheeses, and their Kriek
beers are very popular. Though not the case here, the cut called an onglet, the
hanger or skirt steak, is the cut most often seen behind France’s excellent but
relatively inexpensive steak frites.
Thyme flavored Duck
Breast with a Red Wine Reduction
Photograph
courtesy of Mike Fleming
www.flickr.com/photos/flem007_uk/3562993273/
Pavé de Filet de Bœuf à
la Réduction de Marcillac et Échalotes -
A large cut from a beef fillet
served with a reduced sauce made from the red Marcillac wine (from the
department of Aveyron in south-western France) and shallots. (For ordering a steak cooked the way you prefer, click here).
Carpaccio de Saumon, Réduction de Balsamique et Baies Rouges – A Carpaccio of salmon served with a sauce made from reduced Balsamic Vinegar and berries.
On a dessert menu, sauces served with fruits and pastries may also have been flavored; on a menu listing, that flavoring may also be noted as a reduction.
Reduced sauces on French dessert menus:
Ananas Rôti aux Épices Réduction
de Jus d'Orange – Pineapples
roasted with spices and served with a reduced orange sauce.
Tarte aux Pommes avec Reduction de Cidre et au Grand Marnier – An apple tart served with a reduction of cider and Grand Marnier.
Grand Marnier is a liqueur, a blend
of cognac and bitter oranges. Despite being created in the 1880s, Grand Marnier
remains one of France’s most famous and best-selling liquors. The inventor,
Louis-Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle, was not a shy man and gave his invention
his name, to which he added the title Grand.
About 20 years before the creation of Grand Marnier, a wine merchant and businessman from the Norman Atlantic town of Fecamp calling himself Alexandre Le Grand, Alexander the Great in English, claimed to have discovered an old Benedictine recipe. In his family’s library, he found a 16th-century Bénédictine manuscript with the recipe for the original orange liqueur made in the original Bénédictine monastery in the town. The liqueur recreated from the recipe is the sweet, orange, and honey flavored, 40% proof, a liqueur called Benedictine D.O.M. Benedictine D.O.M is also in many French kitchens and often on the list of digestifs offered at the end of the meal.
A bottle of Bénédictine
D.O.M.
Photograph courtesy of Bacardi-Martini
Sauces made directly from a Jus Corsé,
the natural cooking juices.
When a sauce is made from the natural cooking juices alone (water may be added), that sauce is called a jus, a suc, a jus de cuisson or a jus course.
Originally a jus corsé was a sauce or gravy based on veal or beef stock along with the marrow from the bones; apart from water, not even wine was added. Today jus and jus corsé have moved on; your menu may offer a jus corsé for fish, seafood and vegetables that may be flavored with small additions of herbs, spices, fruits, vinegar or wine.
Jus Corsé on French Menus:
Fillet
de Boeuf Jus Corsé, Gratin de Macaronis – A beef fillet served in its natural cooking
juices and accompanied by macaroni browned in the oven with added cheese,
usually Parmesan or Gruyere.
Guinea
Hen with Irish Oat Risotto, Figs,
and a Port-Black
Pepper Reduction
Photograph courtesy of Chris Chen 陳依勤
www.flickr.com/photos/cchen/52629630/
Langoustines
Roties au Jus Corse – Langoustine,
the Dublin Bay Prawn, Scampi, also called the Norwegian Lobster, served
in its natural cooking juices. Despite the traditional English names, the
langoustine is neither a prawn nor a shrimp; nor are practically any of them
caught near Dublin. Do not confuse langoustine with the much larger langouste; the langouste is the spiny lobster and owner of the lobster tail. Dublin Bay prawns grow up to 20 cm (8"), but most of those
seen in restaurants are rarely more than 15 cm (6"). Dublin Bay prawns may look like
tiny two-clawed lobsters, but they are a very, very, very
distant member of that lobster family.
Langoustine
– A Dublin Bay prawn
There is no meat in the head of a Dublin Bay Prawn and little or
none in the
claws.
The only meat is in the tail.
Photographcourtesy of pierrO
Suprême de
Volaille Farci a la Tapenade, Jus Corsé - Breast of
chicken flavored with tapenade and served with the natural cooking juices. The
tapenade used here for flavor is a Provençal anchoyade spread, made with anchovies, olives, garlic,
olive oil, and added capers. The Provençal word for capers is tapéno, and so
when we add capers to an anchoyade, we have a tapenade.
French diners grow
up knowing about
herbs and sauces. It is not enough to offer a braised or
roast fish or steak. If a chef is preparing a dish with a sauce or herb, the
diner wants to know all about it.
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