supreme sauce

Wikipedia:

Sauce Suprême is traditionally made from a reduced chicken velouté with heavy cream or crème fraîche, and then strained through a fine sieve. This is the recipe as used in Larousse Gastronomique, a seminal work of French haute cuisine, first published in 1938.

A light squeeze of lemon juice is commonly added.
Many chefs also add finely chopped and lightly sautéed mushrooms to the dish.

Shortcut:

It is possible to make a similar sauce to pass for sauce suprême by taking béchamel sauce (a classic mother sauce made with butter, flour and milk), with a poultry stock (effectively a shortcut to making a velouté by combining the roux and stock elements) and butter.
The Cook's Decameron suggests the following recipe: the sauce is made by placing three-quarters of a pint of white sauce into a saucepan, and when it is nearly boiling, adding half a cup of concentrated fowl stock. It should then be reduced until the sauce is quite thick, passed through a strainer into a bain-marie and have added two tablespoons of cream.

Pic1: Take note of the importance of Supreme sauce as secondary sauce, which in its turn has many derived sauces. - internet picture

MY COMMENTS:

This is basically a chicken gravy with added cream. I've probably done things like that, but I wouldn't think of straining them. I don't care if pieces of chicken meat are floating in the sauce. It only makes it taste better.

And again my same complaint about French sauces: too complicated, too convoluted, too artificial even. I am quite happy with my range of sauces which are usually fairly simple compared to these derived sauces. I do not want to spend my time on unnecessarily complicated and time-consuming sauces.

INGREDIENTS

This is what you need for 2 cups:

5 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
2 cups chicken stock
½ cup heavy cream
lemon juice
or 2 tsp. sherry, optional
S&wP

Pic2: pan-roasted chicken breasts, garlic mashed potatoes, fiddlehead ferns and suprême sauce (Wikipedia)

Directions

adapted from this page

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add the flour and whisk for 2 to three minutes.
The roux should be light “blond” in color so watch the heat.
Add the stock in small additions, about ½ cup at a time, and whisk until smooth.
Bring the mixture to a boil then reduce the heat to low and cook for about 10 minutes until sauce is thick enough to leave a trail when the whisk is run through it.
Whisk in the cream and lemon juice or sherry and continue to cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
Strain through a fine sieve to remove lumps and impurities.
Season with salt and pepper.
Serve warm.

See also: Deming, NM gardens, animals and more and avemariasongs.org

See also: Deming, NM gardens, animals and more
and avemariasongs.org