Madeira Sauce Recipe

How To Make a Classic Madeira Wine Sauce in 20 Minutes or Less

“A good base lightly flavored with Madeira will produce one of the greatest of all sauces.” Raymond Sokolov, The Saucier’s Apprentice

Madeira sauce is one of the classic French brown sauces prepared with Madeira wine, peppercorns and a few other important ingredients.  Basically, it can be looked at as a pepper sauce with Madeira wine added to it. It is typically served with beef and chicken but in today’s kitchens, you can serve it with most anything.

A Little History On Madeira Wine and Madeira Sauce

Let’s start with Madeira, a wine from Portugal first made back in the 1400’s for export, especially to France where it was part of “their daily diet”.  Madeira wine was prepared to hold up to the constant motion of the ship carrying it to its destination. A little cane sugar as well as some distilled alcohol was added during the fermentation process resulting in sweet to dry wine with a tanish color.

The old way of making classic Madeira sauce took lots of steps and an extremely long time. Starting with a roux of butter and vegetables like onions, carrots and celery; then adding beef stock and other vegetables including mushrooms and tomatoes; simmering, stirring and skimming for hours, then poured through a fine strainer only to have the whole process start over again with the addition of Madeira wine.

By the time you were done, you ended up with an intensely flavorful Madeira sauce but may have been frustrated by all time invested to make the sauce. Good news – I have a recipe using a commercial demi-glace product that cuts down the time to prepare this sauce to 20 minutes or less.

Demi Glace

When it comes to making great sauces at home, the kind that will wow your family and friends, stock reductions make all the difference. Whether it’s a pan sauce using chicken, beef or fish stock that’s reduced in the pan or starting with a prepared beef / chicken glaze, if you want to create a classic “restaurant quality” sauce, you need to start with a quality stock or glaze.

Making a great stock at home is not hard to do and I urge you all to start making your own stocks. Making a glaze like demi glace (veal/beef) or glace de poulet (chicken) is a lot more complicated and a job you may not want to tackle or at least not that often.

If you want to learn more about demi glace, what it is and how to make it at home, check out this demi glace link.  There are also some links to a few commercial products I’ve tried and think are good alternatives to preparing it at home.

Alternative – Madeira Peppercorn Sauce

For those of you who love a nice “au poivre” sauce or peppercorn sauce in English, you can easily adapt the recipe above to make your own. Just substitute the 1/2 teaspoon black cracked peppercorns with 1 teaspoon drained green peppercorns in brine, coarsely chopped.

You can leave the mushrooms or exclude them depending on your preferences and now you have a delightful Madeira Peppercorn Sauce. This goes especially well with game meats like elk or venison.