A reduction of white wine and shallot, built up with glace de viande and tarragon and finished with a generous amount of butter. Named after the thick cut of beef tenderloin it was originally served with.

Method

Reduce

Bring the white wine, shallot, thyme and bay leaf to the boil and reduce to about two tablespoons.

Glace

Stir in the glace de viande until completely dissolved.

Strain

Pass through a fine sieve.

Mount with butter

Take off the heat and whisk in the ice-cold butter bit by bit until you have a thick, creamy sauce, without a drop of liquid ever separating.

Finish

Stir in the chopped tarragon and chervil and season with salt, pepper and a few drops of lemon juice.

Tips & notes

This sauce is almost entirely butter and lives on the finishing. Work over a low heat or even off the heat, and add the butter in small pieces so the emulsion always has time to recover. Make the sauce just before serving. Keep it warm (not hot) in a water bath for an hour at most; reheating or freezing makes the emulsion split.

Chef's tip

Sauce Chateaubriand is technically a close relative of beurre blanc, but with glace de viande instead of just wine reduction, which makes it firmer and darker in flavour. It is almost never covered in the brown-sauce chapters although it technically fits better there than with the butter sauces, because the base is a meat reduction.

Variations

With morels – Add fried morels for an autumn version.
With peppercorns – Finish with green peppercorns for more bite.
Without glace – Replace with very strongly reduced veal jus.

Contains: Milk Sulphites

Serve with

Chateaubriand
Beef tenderloin
Tournedos
Grilled entrecôte
Frites
Green asparagus

Nutritional values per serving
Calories	441 kcal
Protein	2 g
Carbohydrates	6 g
Fat	41 g
Fibre	1 g

Estimated values, calculated from standard nutritional values per ingredient.