Glace de Viande
It is an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention, a very true saying when it comes to French cookery. So often, the French, famous for their thrifty ways, discover new flavors by making use of scraps or unlikely leftovers. And let us not forget that the French have been hungry to the point of desperation during the three wars their country has suffered in the last hundred years. During the Siege of Paris in 1870, Parisians were actually forced by hunger to eat domestic animals, and some of the finest restaurants in Paris featured on their menus dishes prepared from the animals in the zoo. Small wonder, then, that the French show so much ingenuity in making something out of nothing. Inevitably, glace de viande, a classic example of thrift, must stem from such a background.
The process of making glace de viande, or meat glaze, as it is called in America, is almost as simple as boiling water. Hut this marvelous meat essence, made from the leftovers of the stockpot, is a source of inimitable richness and flavor. Vraiment, it is nearly as miraculous as a silk purse made from a sow's ear. Nor all home cooks consider glace de viande indispensable, possibly because it is not easy to buy and is not usually made in small quantities. But in the opinion of all top-ranking French chefs, it is essential—tout à fail nécessaire—for the best results in fine cooking. The professional chefs will warn you of the folly of trying to match in your kitchen their successes with meat and poultry if you lack a spoonful or two of glace de viande for that last haute cuisine flourish. Glace de viande is as important in bringing out the rich flavors of a subtly blended sauce as a coat of varnish may be to heighten the color of a fine painting.
Anyone who has been in the kitchen of a large French restaurant or hotel has seen the huge stock kettles in which axe simmered gallons of broth to make the various soups and sauces. Alors, when the broth has been used, there remain in these kettles the bones and scraps of meat and vegetables from which one would think all the goodness has been extracted. But no. The French take these odds and ends and literally wring out of them the last vestige of concentrated succulence—the famous glace de viande. They add water to the kettles and simmer the bones and bits of meat and vegetable for about twenty-four hours. This process is easy in a big establishment where steam docs the cooking, and thrifty, too, because the steam is always there, waiting for the turn of the valve. After the long simmering. the stock is strained and conked and concentrated again until it reaches the consistency of a thick brown sauce. Then it is poured into jars or cans, or sometimes into sausage skins, for storage. It can be kept fresh in the refrigerator for months.
Glace de viande is so firm when it is really cold that only a good sharp knife will cut it. but at room temperature it softens quickly. And when you add it to a hot liquid, it melts and combines with the other ingredients very readily.
For many years there was a standard procedure for the making and distribution of glace de viande. Chefs in charge of the kitchens of small exclusive restaurants or large private homes usually bought their glace de viande from luxury food stores whose proprietors purchased it from the kitchens of the large restaurants and hotels. It was customary for the head chef of a large kitchen to permit the chef who made the glace de viande to keep as a sort of pourboire whatever money he got from selling the surplus. The job usually went to the sauce chef, who was in charge of the stockpots.
When I first went to the Paris Ritz, we had so much extra glace de viande to sell that one of my first chores was to make deliveries to the épiceries on the place Etoile. I had to arrive at the hotel two hours early, and at five o'clock on cold, damp winter mornings the ride on the métro was certainly dreary, but I did get a chance to look over the fruits and foreign groceries—so fascinating to the eyes of a country-teared boy—sold in these specialty shops. Everything has its reward, n'est-ce pas?
When I went to the London Ritz, the head chef, Mr. Malley, assigned me, as the new sauce chef, to make the glace de viande. And so I met the chefs from the great London mansions and from the royal palace, too. because they all came to our kitchen for it. I also renewed acquaintance with many an old friend of my Paris days who, like myself, had crossed the Channel to further his career. When I took over the kitchens of the New York Ritz in 1910, I persuaded Mr. Keller, my superior, to adopt the traditional French system of making glace de viande and permitting the chef in charge to sell the surplus. For forty years the bones we discarded from the Ritz kitchens each day had nothing, not even a soupçon of goodness, left in them. And for forty years, until the hotel closed its doors, the fine food stores which supplied the private homes and small restaurants of the neighborhood relied On our kitchen for their glace de viande.
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