"This isn’t what any card-carrying Parisian would recognise as steak with Café de Paris sauce, I know, but it is a punchy, meat-free alternative." Yotam Ottolenghi
Now I'm not necessarily recommending this particular recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi - a recent winter vegetarian recommendation - Celeriac steak with Café de Paris sauce. I'm still not sure enough about celeriac to try it, even though celeriac steaks seem to be rather popular. Besides, as the opening quote from Ottolenghi says - his is not an 'authentic' recipe for the sauce.
No I'm beginning with it because of its reference to Café de Paris sauce which I'm pretty sure I have never talked about. Or made, come to that. And I suspect I won't be doing that either, because now that I have investigated somewhat, I don't think anyone really has a recipe. It's a closely guarded secret yet to get out. And nobody seems to be particularly game to guess.
It all began here, however, at the Café de Paris near the train station in Geneva back in the 1930s. The restaurant was owned by Arthur François (Freddy) Dumont and it is thought that the recipe for this famous sauce was the invention of his father-in-law Mr. Boubier, whose name is now attached to the Café de Paris name in smaller letters - Chez Boubier.
So successful was the dish - Entrecôte with Café de Paris sauce, that it ships the sauce, under licence, to restaurants as far-flung as Switzerland, Portugal, the Middle-East and Hong Kong. Below are photographs from two of those restaurants - the first from the original Geneva restaurant, the second from the Middle East.
There is also a chain of restaurants named Entrecôte begun by a Frenchman - Paul Gineste de Saurs - with equally far flung locations which serves a similar sauce - also a secret. Wikipedia tells us:
"The Paris newspaper Le Monde reports that the sauce as served by Le Relais de Venise – L'Entrecôte is made from poultry livers, fresh thyme and thyme flowers, full cream (19 percent butterfat), white Dijon mustard, butter, water, salt, and pepper. ... The London newspaper The Independent, however, reports that the proprietor of Le Relais de Venise – L'Entrecôte has dismissed the Le Monde report as inaccurate."
So it seems that it's all terribly secret. And it seems that very few people have tried to guess. And even those that did completely ignored the chicken livers bit. The only two recipes that I found were from comparative amateurs - a German site (it was in English) called Gladkokken - Café de Paris Entrecôte sauce and a sort of recipe from a reddit contributor:
"Like others have said it's a herby buttery sauce. I soften one onion in butter until translucent, then add more butter (250g in total) and add tarragon, parsley and sage with anchovies, walnuts, capers and nutmeg. Blend all together until I have a butter cream. Then whisk an egg yolk with Worcestershire sauce, dijon Mustard, lemon and white wine vinegar and once combined, slowly pour in the butter cream. Serve over the steak." OP/reddit
I am guessing, however, that both of those recipes have been sort of made up from a recipe for Café de Paris butter which is much more common. I mean I never saw walnuts or nutmeg mentioned anywhere else. However, almost everyone has a recipe for the butter. It's a flavoured butter with which you top your steak, but it's not a simple butter plus herbs plus perhaps lemon juice that you normally get. It's much more complicated, including things like Worcester sauce, anchovies, curry powder and capers. The recipes I looked at are all pretty similar, so for a well-written sort of Ur recipe I'm giving you Café de Paris butter from Nagi Maehashi of Recipe Tin Eats, mostly because it is very clearly explained, with hints and tips and notes about whether you can substitute or not - for example when she mentions curry powder as an ingredient she notes that:
"The original recipe probably contains vadouvan, a French curry spice blend with colonial roots."
Besides her photographs are particularly mouth-watering. Now this I could try one day.
Don't be put off by the longish list of ingredients - the one common ingredient to many such recipes that she ignores is capers. So check a few others. On the whole, however, there seems to be consensus about the ingredients, and her advice that:
"Café de Paris butter is all about great balance! No single flavour should dominate, it should taste of a complex whole."
And when you look at those few recipes for the sauce, you can see that they have kind of adapted the butter into a sauce. And as Nagi says:
"Top sizzling-hot steaks with slices of this classic French compound butter and watch as it melts into an incredible butter sauce that oozes over the meat!"
Do you need to add egg and cream? Or chicken livers, or walnuts?
And you absolutely must serve it with frites - which are much more difficult.
My photographic alphabet continues with B.
- with the best from today. Bark - so many different kinds of bark and all of them beautiful in uniquely different ways. Other subjects today? Not many more than with A - a bird (actually a pigeon, so a bit of a cheat); bows - leftover from Christmas, a disappearing bench, a bus stop, a picture of a bicycle and the letter b on a rubbish bin. Not terribly exciting. But the bark is rather wonderful.
YEARS GONE BY
December 28
2023 - Nothing
2022 - Reading recipes
2020 - Saying goodbye to leftover turkey - I wish. I still have a couple of meals and/or sandwiches to go I think.
2019 - Cured egg yolks
2018 - Another kind of simple
2017 - Persian essentials
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