Diane Sauce

Diane sauce is not just a creamy mushroom sauce with a fancy name. It has a defined set of parts, and if you leave out the Worcestershire sauce or the mustard you have made something else. Done properly it is sharp, savoury and rich all at once, which is why it survived the trolley service era and is still on menus.

Ingredients

Makes about 350ml, enough for four steaks

• 30g (1oz) butter plus a cold knob for the end
• 2 shallots finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves crushed
• 150g (5oz) button or chestnut mushrooms sliced
• 4 tbsp brandy
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce contains anchovy
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 250ml (9fl oz) beef stock
• 150ml (5fl oz) double cream
• 2 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
• black pepper plenty of it

Kit

• Heavy frying pan
• Wooden spoon
• Small jug

Method

1. Melt the butter in the frying pan over a medium heat. Add the shallots and cook for three minutes until soft, then add the garlic and cook for one minute more. Keep it moving so the garlic does not catch and turn bitter.

2. Turn the heat up, add the mushrooms and cook for five minutes until they have given up their water and started to colour. The pan should sound busy. This is where a lot of the depth comes from, so do not stop while they are still pale.

3. Slide the pan off the heat, pour in the brandy, then return it to the hob. It will bubble hard. Let it reduce for a minute until the pan is almost dry and the alcohol smell has gone, leaving something sweeter behind.

4. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce and the Dijon mustard. Both of them are acidic, and they need to go in now, into the hot pan, rather than later into the cream. Acid added to a finished cream sauce is the fastest way to curdle it.

5. Pour in the beef stock and simmer briskly for five to six minutes until it has reduced by about a third and looks glossy rather than thin.

6. Drop the heat to low and pour in the double cream. Let it come to the barest simmer and hold it there for three minutes, stirring now and then, until it coats a spoon.

7. Take the pan off the heat, drop in a cold knob of butter and swirl the pan until it melts in. That final butter is what gives Diane its shine. Stir in the parsley, grind in a lot of black pepper, and pour it over rested steak.

Tips worth knowing

• The five things that make it Diane are shallot, mushroom, brandy, Worcestershire sauce and Dijon. Change the mushrooms or the stock if you like, but if you drop the Worcestershire or the mustard the sauce loses its identity.
• Do not flambe unless you have a clear extractor and no long hair or loose sleeves. Simply reducing the brandy hard for a minute burns off the alcohol just as well and tastes the same.
• Cold butter swirled in off the heat, and only off the heat, thickens and glosses the sauce. Warm butter added over the flame just goes oily and floats.
• If you have cooked steaks first, do all of this in the same pan without washing it. The stuck brown residue is worth more than any stock cube.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps for two days in the fridge, covered. Reheat gently in a pan with a splash of stock, stirring, and stop as soon as it is hot. Freezing is not worth it here, as the mushrooms go spongy and the cream separates.

Questions people ask