Ivory Sauce, or Albufera Sauce

Sauce Albufera (ivory sauce) teaches restraint: the meat glaze must deepen a perfect Suprême without announcing itself as brown. Four tablespoons per quart, no more, is the one true thing to know before you touch the pan. The finished sauce should be lustrous, gently savoury, and unmistakably ivory, made for pale poultry and poached sweetbreads.

The old formula assumed a saucier on staff, a stockpot never off the fire, and finished Suprême and pale glaze waiting within reach; a salamander has no work here. Your honest equivalent is a heavy saucepan, a whisk, and prepared Suprême Sauce (No. 106a). The formula below keeps the book's exact four-tablespoon-per-quart proportion and makes about two quarts for a generous dinner table. Holding pans and repeated passing were brigade scaffolding, so they go. Gentle heat and genuinely pale glaze are the dish, so they stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The decisive step is the incorporation: warm sauce, fluid glaze, gentle whisking. Never let it boil. If the butterfat begins to bead, don't pour it out. Ça se rattrape, and you'll rebuild the emulsion from a spoonful of cool Suprême.