Hey Paul -
Actually, I said white stock, not white sauce. It's the second stock after estouffade (and his chicken is the same thing, with the addition of additional giblets and/or carcasses, and "three boiling fowls" - that's a lot of bird per gallon of water!!).
I've worked across many spectrums, all of them, really, classically based. But I've never cooked entirely true from Escoffier's work, to the word. I'm doing it because until I do, it's just a thought experiment, you know? I can't know what it is, until doing it verbatim, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But I really am tripped out by not just the use of salt (I don't in my stocks, but many do - two immediately come to mind, Paul Bocuse, Judy Rodgers/Zuni Cafe Cookbook - lost her book years ago, but I seem to recall not only that she salts her stock, but against all orthodoxy, doesn't skim it at all - let's it cool scum and all overnight, then skims, if memory holds), but man - that's a lot of salt, or so it seems to me! It will be nice to make some velouté and derivative sauces from this, to see how it works.
Partially, I'm just trying to feel the Belle Époque - and imagine, their palates demanded a richer, fuller experience. Partially, I love culinary history, the underlying reasons of why a certain gastronomy was as it was. But here, as well, just curious if anyone else has literally worked Escoffer, and what their experience of this use of salt is.
Edit: Equally astonishing, at least to me, is that I haven't found any discussion of this anywhere on the web. I would have thought that given Escoffier's importance, and the importance of these stocks to French cuisine as we know it, there'd be more on this. I just find it kind of jarring, but then I admit I can go in fits of obsession, when nature allows.
