Behind the French Menu

Madère, Vin de Madère - Madeira Wine. Madeira Wine in French Cuisine.

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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Madeira Wines

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Vin de Madère - Madeira wine.

Madeira is a smooth, fragrant, and opulent fortified wine with an alcohol content of between 18-21 percent. The wine comes from the Portuguese Madeira Islands in the North Atlantic.

There are four grades of sweetness for Madeira wines and they are: seco-dry, meio seco- medium dry, meio doce-medium sweet and doce-sweet.

(A fortified wine is made by ending the fermentation that takes place in the barrels by adding an eau-de-vie, a grape alcohol, to the wine. Ending the fermentation before it is naturally completed controls and raises the amount of alcohol in the wine and the level of sweetness).

The place to go and taste.

Photograph courtesy of Audrey-Lane

Madeira wine is a longtime favorite in French cuisine and your menu may offer:

Soupe à l'Oignon et au Madère Gratinée – French onion soup served with toasted bread and cheese on top, browned under the grill before serving. This menu listing has Madeira wine added to the soup and that identifies it as a recipe from the city of Lyon, France. According to tradition, the city of Lyon uses Madeira or Port for flavoring and the city of Paris uses wine.

Rognons de Veau Poêlés, Sauce Madère et Gratin de Pommes Charlotte – Lightly fried veal kidneys prepared in a Madeira sauce and served with mashed Charlotte potatoes browned under the grill before serving. Charlotte is a very popular and tasty French potato; it is not a name for a potato dish. The Charlotte is the potato most often used in France for steamed or mashed potatoes. Sauce Madeira is made with veal stock or veal bouillon, butter, shallots and, of course, Madeira wine.

Milk-fed veal sweetbreads with a Madère wine sauce

Photograph courtesy of veaudelait,com

Foie de Veau Sauté au Madère - Veal liver sautéed in a Madeira wine sauce.

Langue de Boeuf aux Petits Légumes, Sauce Madère. – Beef tongue served with baby vegetables and prepared with a Madeira sauce. Beef tongue with a Madeira wine sauce will be on quite a number of French menus; it is a dish that has remained popular for over one hundred years. Baby vegetables are miniature versions of regular vegetables and were first developed in Italy; since then French creations have been added.

Melon Cavaillon au Jambon de Bayonne ou Madère - Cavaillon melon served with Bayonne cured ham and flavored with Madeira wine. The Cavaillon melon comes from the beautiful, small Provencal town of the same name, 20 km (13 miles) from Avignon. The Cavaillon melon is, I believe, the tastiest melon in France. If you are in France anywhere from mid-June through September when it is in season do not miss out on this melon. The melon is green on the outside with dark-green ribs; inside a ripe Cavaillon melon, the flesh is sweet and orange colored with a heady and memorable scent. Bayonne ham's name comes from the city of Bayonne; the capital of the Pays Basques, the French Basque Country. Bayonne is in the department of the Pyrenees-Atlantiques and its ham is the most popular cured ham in France.

Cavaillon melon and Bayonne ham.

Photograph courtesy of Weldon Kennedy

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Ris de Veau aux Morilles, Sauce Madère – Veal Sweetbreads served with morel mushrooms and Madeira wine sauce.

Tournedos Rossini – The most famous of all steak dishes made with Madeira wine; it is named after the Italian composer Gioachino Rossini. Rossini composed the operas, the Barber of Seville and William Tell, along with many others and was loved in France where he lived for many years. Rossini was also a gourmet and considered great chefs as maestros, like himself they were masters of their art. The cut for a tournedos comes from the cœur de filet de bœuf, the heart, the center, of a fillet of beef; this is the most expensive of all beef cuts. The same cut is used for a Chateaubriand. The recipe named after Rossini includes goose foie gras, fattened goose liver, the black Perigord truffle, and a Madeira wine sauce. To see the link on Tournedos Rossini click here.

A Tournedos Rossini

Photograph by Monkey Business through YayMicro.co

The different types of Madeira wine:

Madeira wines made with a single type of grape are considered the finest, but they are also the most expensive. Historically, there were over eleven types of Madeira wines, but only seven or eight were truly single grape wines. Today only four white grapes and one red grape made be used for single grape Madeira wines. These wines are aged and their date of bottling is on the label. A single grape Madeira wine means that at least 85% of the wine comes from a single type of grape and that grape gives the wine its name. However, the most popular Madeira wines are the less expensive, but often excellent blends. The blends also improve with age and may be purchased with different degrees of sweetness.

Madeira Wine Barrel, 2002 vintage.

Photograph courtesy of Alexander Baxevanis

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The single grape Madeira wines:

Sercial

Sercial is a white wine grape and the driest of all single grape vintage Madeira wines. Sercial is aged for at least five years before being sold, and as it ages it darkens and mellows. Sercial is the Madeira wine most often served cold as an aperitif.

Five-year-old Madeira

Photograph courtesy of y kawahara

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Verdelho

Verdelho, a white wine grape makes a golden, semi-dry wine and in France, this wine and the slightly sweeter Bual Madeira wine are the Madeira wines most chefs choose for Sauce Madeira.

Note the interesting label on the first barrel

Bastardo?

Photograph courtesy of Paul Townley

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Bual

Bual comes from the Boal Cachud white grape. This Madeira wine varies in color from golden to a deep brown as it ages. It is a medium-sweet wine and either this wine or Verdelho will be chosen for Madeira Sauce. Bual may also be served as a digestif, a dessert wine, as an alternative to port.

A 5-year-old Bual Madeira.

Photograph courtesy of Joanne Goldby

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Malmsey

Malmsey comes from a white grape called the Malvasia Candida and makes one of the sweetest Madeira wines. Malmsey is a full-bodied wine and is used both as a dessert wine and in sweet desserts, pastries, and sweet sauces.

Tinto Negra also called Tinta Negra Mole

Tinto Negra is the most abundant of all Madeira’s wine grapes. This is a red wine grape and the most popular wine used for adding the 15% permitted to the single grape Madeira wines. Tinta Negra Madeira wine comes in dry, semi-dry, semi-sweet and sweet wines and accounts for 80% of all Madeira wine sales. When you see a bottle of Madeira wine without any other name, the chances are that it is Tinto Negra or a blended wine consisting mainly of Tinta Negra.

Learning about Madeira wines in France:

My introduction to the story of Madeira in France was in the home of a French family. My hosts, in honor of three overseas visitors, invited a friend who was the cellar master in a Medoc Château to join us all for dinner. The cellar master surprised us all with two great bottles of Medoc from different years. These were seriously select vintage wines that I could not have justified buying myself. However, the real surprise that evening was the wine the cellar master brought as the digestif; he had brought a wine from outside France! That wine was a Bual Vintage Madeira that had spent 20 years in an oak barrel before bottling. With all these wines, our dinner discussions were about nothing else, and I was introduced to the history of Madeira wine in France.

Madeira wine tasting

Photograph courtesy of PortoBay Experiences

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The French suffered from the English control of Madeira wine.

The English controlled most of the Madeira wine trade, and as we all know for hundreds of years, England and France were at war. During their constant wars, the British were always attempting to blockade France. As a result of these blockades, Madeira only seriously entered the French market with the exile of Napoleon I from France in 1815. Then with the wars with England ended, Madeira became a success story in French cuisine. The most famous dish from that period using Madeira wine, and still on many menus, is Tournedos Rossini. The dish was created for Rossini by the legendary French Chef Casimir Moissons in 1822 or 1823.

Like Sherry and Port the British were the driving force behind the development of Madeira.

From the 16th century, Madeira wine was developed and imported by the English. The English had already made Port and Sherry a staple in the homes of the aristocracy and merchant classes, and after Madeira, they added Marsala wine from Sicily. At that time, all wine was sold in barrels, and most wines did not travel well on long sea voyages. Fortified wine, wines whose fermentation in the barrel had been stopped also traveled much better. Madeira’s ability to travel well had also made it a favorite in the American colonies. However, in the North American colonies, the laws on shipping the wine only on British-owned ships pushed the price of Madeira, their favorite wine, up. That shipping law helped drive the movement for independence to the tipping point.

Swordfish cooked in Madeira wine

Photograph courtesy of Giovanni Prestige

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The treatment of Madeira wines:

Madeira, sherry, and port wines were transported to the British Empire and others in India, and the effect of long sea voyages through the tropics was uniquely beneficial to Madeira. Those long sea voyages naturally slowly cooked and oxidized Madeira. That tropical exposure, in barrels, improved the wine's taste, and in the kitchen, the cooks found they had a wine that could be used without the taste changing. Back on the Islands of Madeira, two systems were created to emulate the process without sailing through the tropics, and the rest is history.

Madeira quickly became the most famous fortified wine in French and other kitchens and has remained there. Despite its popularity in the kitchen, most Madeira is consumed as wine. Madeira wines' use in cooking remains a small part of the market.

Madeira labels:

Colheita - Single grape Madeira wines aged and marked with a vintage date; these are often young wines

Reserva - Reserve- A Madeira single grape wine that has spent at least 5 years in an oak barrel before bottling

Reserva Velha - Special reserve – A Madeira single grape wine that has spent at least 10 years in an oak barrel before bottling

Reserva Extra - Extra Reserve – A Madeira single grape wine that has spent at least 15 years in an oak barrel before bottling

Frasqueira – A Madeira single grape wine that has spent at least 20 years in an oak barrel before bottling.

The words used to describe Madeira wines:

The wines’ color:

Muito Pálido – very pale; Pálido – Pale; Dourado – Golden; Meio Escuro – Medium Dark; Escuro – Dark.

The wine’s texture:

Leve – Light or pale, Mencão – full Bodied or full, Fino – Fine or rich; Macio – Soft; Aveludado – Velvety; Amadurecido – Mellow.

The Madeira Islands:

Madeira is an archipelago, a group of islands. There are two inhabited islands, Madeira and Porto Santo where the Madeira wine grapes grow with another six small islands that are uninhabited nature reserves. The Madeira Islands are in the North Atlantic with the nearest land being the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife 490 km (300 mi) away. The nearest landmass is Africa with Morocco 788 km, (490 miles) distant and Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, is 967 km, (604 miles) away.

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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

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from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

French onion soup in the manner of Paris.

Photograph courtesy of jefferyw

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Onion soup in the manner of Paris or Lyon?

Paris and Lyon claim the original recipes for French onion soup and the arguments among the residents of the two towns can turn heated. That, notwithstanding thousands of years before the first printed recipe the first hunter-gatherer in France to throw a wild onion in the cooking pot owns the original French recipe.

The traditional differences between the two onion soups were over the Parisian use of vegetable, chicken or beef stock, or bouillon, and wine or Cognac, The Lyonnais version used no stock and the alcohol was Madeira wine or Port. These traditional differences are now often ignored, and so ask your server or maitre’d about the soup on your menu. If you have time during your stay in France enjoy a real Parisian onion soup and a Lyonnais one as well

You should expect French servers to be knowledgeable. Serving, in France, is a profession with all the attributes of a profession. Tips are not expected nor are they an important part of their income. Restaurant staff have salaries, paid vacation time of 42 days, and 35-hour workweeks, sick leave, and pensions.

Your onion soup may be on the menu under one of many names:

Soupe à l”Oignon à la Parisienne, Gratinée Parisienne or Gratinée des Halles among the many names used for onion soup in the tradition of Paris.

Gratinée Lyonnais, Soupe à l'Oignon Lyonnaise or Soupe à l'Oignon Gratinée among the many names used for onion soup in the tradition of the city of Lyon.

French onion soup in the manner of Lyon.

Photograph courtesy of Robyn Lee

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Today, whether you choose the soup served in a Parisian Bistro or a Lyonnais Buchon or in a restaurant with Michelin stars if there is a trained French chef in the kitchen the onion soup should be excellent. I am a French onion soup junkie, and from experience, both the Parisian and Lyonnais versions make excellent, and sometimes memorable, onion soups; there are no winners or losers. The only differences are the flavors.

When you order your French onion soup expect:

Your soup will be served with bubbling or almost bubbling cheese on top of toasted or grilled bread or croutons. The heart of the dish is white onions, fried until they are a dark golden brown. To the onions, depending on the recipe used may have been added vegetable, chicken or beef stock along with a few herbs at the chef’s discretion. Added to the stock, in the Parisian manner, will be white or red wine or Cognac and in the Lyonnais manner will be Madeira wine or port. The soup is transferred to individual bowls, and on top will be added slices of grilled or toasted bread or croutons covered in grated cheese. Just before serving, the individual bowls are placed under the grill until the cheese melts. Then by both sight and smell, a mouthwatering soup will be put before you. Bon Appétit!

N.B. The term gratinée, browned, when used in connection with French onion soup, indicates that the soup has grilled cheese on top. All dishes with the word gratinée will have been browned under the grill usually with the help of grated cheese or buttered breadcrumbs,

About the recipes for French onion soup.

The original and oldest printed French recipe, along with a few purist chefs today, make onion soup without any stock; that is in the original manner of the city of Lyon. Today’s chefs who do not use stock include Raymond Blanc, as well as the late Paul Bocuse. However, the majority of recipes that I have seen from today’s French-trained, celebrity chefs working outside of France do use stock in the manner of Paris. Those chefs include Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, Michel Roux Jr, Wolfgang Puck, and Gordon Ramsay.

The grated cheese used in French onion soup is also another ingredient that may be a source of arguments, though French Gruyere is the cheese used most often. The other cheeses used include Comte AOP, French Emmenthal, and Cantal AOP. In the UK and North America, I have enjoyed French onion soups where Cheddar was the cheese of choice.

N.B. French Gruyere cheese has some small holes while Swiss does not. However, French Gruyere is not the cheese famed for its many holes, that is Emmenthal.

French onion soup is not difficult to make, it just takes time.

I am not a chef, nor am I a particularly good cook, and this is not a cookbook; however, I can cook a reasonably satisfying French onion soup. I use at least one and a half large onions per person, cooked slowly and carefully until they are caramelized a golden brown, not black. If the onions become black, they become bitter, as I know to my shame.

Making sure those onions do not burn is the most time-consuming procedure; expect a good two hours of watching and turning the onions if you are making French onion soup for ten. One and a half a large onions per person may seem to be overdoing it; however, when the onions are cooked slowly, to that golden brown color, you may be surprised by how little onion is left by the time they are caramelized.

The heart of the matter.

Photograph courtesy of erik forsberg

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I use vegetable stock to be inclusive for the vegetarians in my family, and I use red wine for flavor and color. I allow the soup to boil on a low flame until the volume is reduced enough to achieve the desired taste and consistency; then, I toast or grill the bread. If I have forgotten to buy French Gruyere cheese, I use the best yellow cheese at hand with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese if needed, to give the cheese more flavor.

Toasted baguette ready for the soup.

Photograph courtesy of secretlondon123

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The purist’s recipe for French onion soup.

Paul Bocuse, without any argument, was the greatest chef in the second part of the 1900s; he came from Lyon, France. Paul Bocuse’s French onion soup is the soup of a purist; he uses no stock at all. Onions rule.

I read Paul Bocuse’s English language book: The Cuisine of Paul Bocuse, Grafton Books. Bocuse’s recipe is onions, butter, a bouquet-garni, and a little pepper. To thicken the soup, he uses egg yolks along with a small drop of Madeira wine for additional flavor; he uses no stock.

Paul Bocuse.

Photograph courtesy of Brian Sikorski

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Paul Bocuse, who passed away in 2017 was, fifty years ago, among the chefs who threw out the heavy sauces and warming pans of haute cuisine. He and his friends brought in the freshest produce, and no dish was ever warmed up. Those chefs were the founders of Nouvelle Cuisine; now, they are the gray-haired establishment. Besides Bocuse's own three-star restaurant in Lyon, he was the force behind the cooking competition that has become the most important cooking competition in the world, the Bocuse Dor. The international finals of the Bocuse Dor is held bi-annually in Lyon, France.

The history of the Gratinée des Halles.

The Les Halles French onion soup.

Les Halles was Paris’s wholesale fresh produce market, and in the ’50s and ’60s Les Halles was famous for its midnight traffic jams. Parisians and visitors alike traveling to the market caused the jams as they visited its restaurants for their legendary French onion soup; served from midnight until 5.00am. From 5:00 am the restaurants returned to feeding the workers in the market. There is no single Les Halles recipe, but that name on a menu rings the bell of tradition.

The Les Halles produce market is no more.

Les Halles had been Paris’s wholesale produce market for 800 years. However, in the second half of the 20th century, the traffic congestion, not to mention the sanitation problems in the center of the Paris, was unacceptable. In 1971, Paris’s wholesale fresh produce market was moved to the Parisian suburb of Rungis near the Paris-Orly airport. Where Les Halles once stood, there is today an enormous, but in my view, not particularly attractive, below-ground shopping center, called the Forum des Halles. There is also the Les Halles Metro station and the Châtelet -Les Halles RER train station. That RER station is also the largest underground train station in the world. I wonder why I always stay away from it?

Visiting Rungis, the world’s largest fresh produce market.

For those who wish to visit the Rungis produce market, you may take the Metro line 7 to the end of the line, then take the bus 185 to Rungis Market. By car from central Paris, it is about half-an-hour outside of rush hour. There are 22 restaurants in the new market, some of which serve onion soup. Rungis is the largest fresh produce market in the world and offers organized tours for professionals and tourists from 05:00. If you have heard of the Tokyo fish market, Rungis is that plus fruit, vegetables, flowers, meat, poultry, game and more.

The Rungis English language website is:

http://www.rungismarket.com/en/jaune/visiter_rungis/index.asp

A stall in Rungis market

Photograph courtesy of Nick Saltmarsh

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The oldest recipe for the modern version of French Onion Soup.

While onion soup recipes have been published since the times of the Roman empire, French Onion soup is a different matter. The oldest recipe I have seen is in a book written by Alexander Dumas Père, the author of The Count of Monte Christo and The Three Musketeers, among many many other books.

Alexander Dumas Pere was also a passionate Gourmet and he wrote two books on French cuisine. The larger of the two is Dumas’s Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine. That book has been translated into English in an excellent, concise version called Dumas on Food by Alan and Jane Davidson, printed by Oxford University Press. Dumas on Food gives, in English, Alexandre Dumas’s recipe for Soupe à l’Oignon à la Stanislas and the story behind its fame. The Stanislas noted in that recipe is the same Stanislas Leszczynski, Duke of Lorraine and Bar, France,ex-King of Poland, father-in-law of King Louis XV of France who gave Rum Baba and a number of other dishes their name.

The National Library of France, Biblotech National de France allows you to read, without charge, the unabridged, original, French version of Dumas’s Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine online; it comes in two parts. You may also download the 1,000 plus pages that are the whole book, in PDF format, for a minuscule payment.

The cover of the original Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine.

Alexander Dumas Père.

Photograph courtesy of the Biblotech National de France.

The Biblotech National de France website, with English instructions, can be reached at http://gallica.bnf.fr.

For the paragraphs on Soupe à l’Oignon à la Stanislas click on or copy and paste the link below in your browser:

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62337530/f115.item.r=stanislas%20

The link above will bring you to page 764 and you may read about Soupe à l’Oignon a la Stanislas, with the recipe on the next page (765) as well as other onion soups that pleased Alexander Dumas Père.

The search for the absolute onion soup.

A great Soupe a l‘Oignon can be an existential experience. Following on that, on more than one occasion, I have covered Paris from arrondissement to arrondissement looking for the absolute onion soup; while dragging my family around Paris with me. I believe that once I nearly found that soup, but it still managed to escape me. One day I will find that absolute onion soup, and then my soul will be content; in the meantime, I continue looking for it in Paris and Lyon with tastings in many other parts of the world.

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