Normandy Sauce Recipe

By
Danilo Alfaro
Danlio Alfaro
Danilo Alfaro
Danilo Alfaro has published more than 800 recipes and tutorials focused on making complicated culinary techniques approachable to home cooks.
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Updated on 07/23/21
Normandy sauce
Veronique Leplat / Getty Images
Prep: 5 mins
Cook: 20 mins
Total: 25 mins
Servings: 8 servings
Yield: 2 cups

The Normandy sauce is a classic sauce for fish and seafood. It's also called Normande sauce and sauce Normande. It is made by flavoring a fish velouté with chopped mushrooms and then thickening it with a mixture of egg yolks and heavy cream called a liaison.

The Normandy sauce can be served with fish, seafood, and with fettuccine dishes. It also is good served with vegetables. Auguste Escoffier has a recipe for the sauce to serve with sole Normande and notes it is a perfect sauce for whitefish.

Normandy sauce relies on first making a velouté sauce, which is one of the mother sauces of French cuisine identified by Escoffier. Velouté means velvet and is produced from unroasted bones, in this case, fish bones. It's thickened with a blond roux of butter and flour. Fish stock is used as a separate ingredient in this recipe as well.

There is no way around it, this sauce is very heavy in cream, eggs, and butter. Enjoy its silky richness but in moderation. It also takes much time to prepare, unless you have a ready source of fish stock.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

  • 1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped

  • 2 cups fish velouté sauce

  • 1/4 cup fish stock

  • 1/2 cup heavy cream

  • 2 large egg yolks

Steps to Make It

  1. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and sauté the mushrooms until soft, about 5 minutes.

  2. Add the velouté and the fish stock to the mushrooms. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer and reduce by about one-third.

  3. In a stainless steel or glass bowl, beat together the cream and egg yolks until smooth. This egg-cream mixture is called a liaison.

  4. Slowly add about a cup of the hot velouté into the liaison, whisking constantly so that the egg yolks don't curdle from the heat.

  5. Now gradually whisk the warm liaison back into the velouté.

  6. Bring the sauce back to a gentle simmer for just a moment, but don't let it boil.

  7. Strain, swirl in the remaining butter and serve right away.

Use the sauce over fish or seafood or mix with fettuccine or vegetables.

If you don't have a prepared source of fish stock, you'll need to learn to make your own fish stock. The good news is that it takes far less time than making chicken or beef stock. You can make it in 30 minutes with fish heads and bones. If you have access to a fish market, you can easily get these either for very cheap or free. But avoid salmon, trout, and other oily and fatty fish as their flavor is too strong, unless you are specifically making a sauce from those fish.

Raw Egg Warning

Consuming raw and lightly cooked eggs poses a risk of foodborne illness.

Nutrition Facts (per serving)
123 Calories
9g Fat
4g Carbs
6g Protein
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Nutrition Facts
Servings: 8
Amount per serving
Calories 123
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 9g 12%
Saturated Fat 5g 27%
Cholesterol 92mg 31%
Sodium 5704mg 248%
Total Carbohydrate 4g 1%
Dietary Fiber 0g 1%
Total Sugars 3g
Protein 6g
Vitamin C 1mg 4%
Calcium 52mg 4%
Iron 1mg 6%
Potassium 287mg 6%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)