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Sauce

Financier® Sauce

A sauce made with sherry or madeira, truffle essence, cayenne, and finished Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and truffle work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Financier® Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Reduce the base

  1. In a stewpan, combine the sherry or madeira, truffle essence, and cayenne.

  2. Reduce the mixture to half its original quantity.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add a ladleful of finished Espagnole sauce and let it boil for five minutes.

  2. Pass the sauce through a tamis into a bain-marie for use.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sherry + truffletop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes
  3. Sherry + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sherry or madeira
Its acidity and sugars concentrate during reduction, giving the sauce depth and a rounded sweetness.
Truffle essence
Supplies the concentrated aroma that defines the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Provides the body and savoury base that the reduced wine is added to.

The step that matters

Reducing the wine base. Evaporating water concentrates the flavour of the sherry or madeira. Stopping at half the original volume sets the intensity of the final sauce, so reducing too little leaves it thin and reducing too far makes it harsh or overpowering once the Espagnole is added.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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