Various Glazes

Glaces diverses (various glazes) teach the cleanest lesson at the sauce stove: reduction concentrates the whole stock, not merely its scent. Before you touch a pan, know this one thing: the stock must be unsalted and rich enough in gelatin to hold a soft wobble when cold. Salt becomes brutal under reduction, and a thin stock becomes only a smaller thin stock.

The original entry assumed a saucier watching several reductions and a stockpot never off the fire. The honest home translation starts with two quarts of finished stock, uses a wide pan for quick evaporation, then moves the final quantity into a small saucepan where one cook can control it. Repeated service pots were brigade scaffolding and can go. Careful skimming, patient concentration, and the proper finishing point are the dish itself and must stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

A finished glace coats food with a brilliant, unctuous film, strengthens a sauce by the measured spoonful, or becomes a sauce when correctly creamed or buttered. The final cold-saucer test matters most: hot glace always looks looser than it will be cold, so judge a cooled drop, not your impatience.