Madiera Divine Sauce §

Making a Madeira-Marchant de Vin sauce, or merely “Madeira Divine” sauce for short, normally requires first concocting an Espagnole sauce, and then, from this, a demi-glace sauce, and then, from this, a Madeira sauce, only to be followed by then making a Marchant de Vin sauce and ending by merging the two. This is, needless to say, a tedious process task because you usually have to flip back and forth in the recipe book and prepare each sauce before you can use it the next refinement. So, in the recipe below, I bring everything together into one set of ingredients and one procedure for making the sauce. I have tried to reduce the fat and sodium content where feasible.

If you have never tasted a combination of Madeira and Marchant de Vin sauces, you have a superlatively pleasant experience awaiting you.

  • 2 tbsp bacon, crumbled
  • 2 tbsp <butter>
  • ½ cup onion, minced
  • 2 scallions, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp garlic purée
  • 1 rib celery, diced
  • 1 medium carrot, minced
  • 1 (10½-oz) can condensed beef or 10½ oz homemade† consommé
  • 1 cup dry red wine
  • 1 tbsp low-sodium Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tsp ham base
  • 1 tsp yeast extract (e.g. Marmite® or Vegemite®)
  • ½ tsp powdered thyme
  • 1 oz tomato paste
  • 1 heaping tsp porcini mushroom powder
  • ½ tsp liquid smoke
  • 2 bay leaves
  • ¼ cup Madeira wine
  • 3 tbsp gravy flour

Nuke rashers of bacon as prescribed earlier in this work† and crumble them into bits. Melt the <butter> in a saucepan and brown the onion, scallion, garlic, celery, and carrot, about 10 minutes. Add the consommé, red wine, low-sodium Worcestershire, ham base, yeast extract, thyme, tomato paste, porcini powder, smoke, and bay leaves. Add the bacon and bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover, and simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and let cool somewhat.

Use a hand blender to purée the mixture and strain it through a fine sieve, pressing the vegetables to get as much flavor from them as you can.

Make a slurry of the flour and Madeira wine. Return the sauce to the saucepan, add half of the Madeira-moistened flour, and whisk until blended. Bring the heat back up to a simmer, stirring constantly. Continue to whisk in portions of the flour mixture until the sauce just coats a metal spoon. Cook another 5 minutes, stirring, until the taste of the flour is gone. Cool a little before use.

Serve the warm sauce in a gravy boat. Makes about 2 cups.