Café de Paris sauce

Café de Paris sauce is a complex butter-based sauce served with grilled beef. When it is served with the sliced portion of an entrecôte (in English: a rib eye steak) or a faux-filet (in English: a sirloin steak) the resulting dish is known as "entrecôte Café de Paris".

The sauce was first popularised in the 1940s by the Café de Paris restaurant in Geneva, then owned by Arthur-François (Freddy) Dumont, and entrecôte Café de Paris remains the restaurant's speciality. The Café de Paris attributes the origin of the sauce to Mr Dumont's father-in-law, one Mr Boubier. Today the restaurant also ships the sauce to several other restaurants which serve it under licence: the Café de Paris in Lausanne, the À l'Entrecôte in Sion (Switzerland), the Brasserie L'Entrecôte in Lisbon and Porto, and the Entrecôte Café de Paris restaurants in Dubai, Kuwait, Riyadh, Hong Kong and Stockholm.

A closely similar sauce is also served by the Entrecôte groups of restaurants operated by the descendants of Paul Gineste de Saurs in Paris, Geneva, Toulouse, Lyon, London, New York, Beirut, Doha, Dubai, Riyadh, and other cities.

Both the Café de Paris and the Entrecôte groups of restaurants consider the sauce's ingredients and method of preparation to be a trade secret.

The Paris newspaper Le Monde reports that the sauce as served by Le Relais de Venise – L'Entrecôte is made from chicken livers, fresh thyme and thyme flowers, full cream (19 percent butterfat), white Dijon mustard, butter, water, salt, and pepper.

According to Le Monde, the chicken livers are blanched in one pan with the thyme until they start to turn colour. In a second pan, the cream is reduced on low heat with the mustard and infused with the flavour of the thyme flowers. The chicken livers are then finely minced and pressed through a strainer into the reduced cream. As the sauce thickens, the butter is incorporated into it with a little water, it is beaten smooth, and fresh-ground salt and pepper are added. 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.

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Wikipedia