The Story of the Sauce

It all happened because Diamond Jim Brady, on a visit to Paris, visited the Cafe de Marguery. Now there are some people who like to eat and there are some who live to eat. Diamond Jim Brady, who was called so because of the many diamonds he owned and wore, fell into this second category. He was a gourmet quite beyond par excellence and one that, moreover, was fortunate enough to live in nineteenth century USA, which was the era of the fifteen course dinner. Besides, being a millionaire salesman of railroad equipment allowed him to indulge in his passion to his stomach's content. His eating feats, probably still unsurpassed, were legendary in his own time. The restaurateur George Rector once described him as 'the best twenty-five customers we had'!

Like most of us, Jim Brady began his day with a hearty breakfast - only, in his case, a hearty breakfast meant a really hearty one - a gallon of orange juice, hominy, eggs, muffins, chops, bread, flapjacks, potatoes, and steak. This was followed by a small mid-morning snack of two or three dozen oysters and clams and then an hour later, around 12.30 p.m., came lunch - more oysters and clams, two or three crabs stuffed with a spicy paste, a brace of broiled lobsters, a joint of beef, a salad, and different varieties of pies. After lunch came a mid-afternoon snack of yet more sea-food and lemon soda - several bottles of it. Then, mercifully, Jim rested. Until dinner, that is. This surpassed everything that had gone before.

There were Lynnhaven Oysters - about thirty-six of them - and six crabs for starters. Then two helpings of green turtle soup and six or seven giant lobsters. This was followed by two helpings of terrapin, two whole canvas-back ducks, steak, vegetables, and, last but not the least, dessert - cakes and pastry by the platterful and a two-pound box of bon-bons or glace fruit. Then, after a visit to the theater, the day ended with supper - several game birds and several large beer mugs of root-beer.

This was what he ate every single day!

Naturally, the restaurateurs fell over themselves for such a patron and were prepared to go to absolutely any lengths for him. The Rectors, for example, would daily ship several special barrels of extra-large oysters from Baltimore especially for him.

But now arose a problem - Jim Brady, at the Cafe de Marguery, had tasted that establishment's famous dish - the fillet de sole Marguery, and had fallen completely under its spell. He casually mentioned to Charles Rector that unless he could come up with something as good, he might very well consider changing restaurants. Of course Charles Rector wasn't going to let this happen! He acted quickly to avert the tragedy. He summoned his son George post-haste from Cornell University where he was studying Law, and dispatched him by the very next ship to France with the instructions to 'return either with the Sauce Marguery or in it'.

So young George Rector the hopeful Law Student ended up as a dismayed Culinary Spy in France. He couldn't very well walk into the Cafe de Marguery and ask for their recipe, you know - recipes, especially such popular ones, were very closely guarded secrets - otherwise everyone would know how to cook them and then, nobody would come to the restaurant to eat. So it was no easy matter getting his hands on the Sauce Marguery. He could not even stand around and see how it was prepared as only the restaurant's Master Chefs were allowed that privilege. But George was a resourceful and clever chap, not to mention the fact that he had to think of his father's honor back home. So he went and asked for a job at the Cafe de Marguery. He began as a bus-boy, progressed to waiter and then apprentice cook and then further up the ladder. It took him an entire year. But ultimately not only did he have the sauce recipe, his cooking of it was also pronounced as perfect by a panel of seven Master Chefs.

With his mission accomplished, George embarked on the return journey to the USA. His father and Diamond Jim Brady were waiting there on the Manhattan docks to receive him, and, even as the ship gangway was lowered, George heard Jim Brady hollering over the noise of the dockside crowd, "Have you got the sauce?"

"I got it!" George yelled back and saw wide smiles spread across the faces of the two men.

No sooner had his feet touched the shore than they bundled him straight off to the restaurant and told him to start cooking.

Jim Brady went to round-up all his friends and that night they all tucked in with great gusto the fillet de sole Marguery - only now it was called the fillet de sole Marguery a la Diamond Jim.

It was an absolute sensational success!

Diamond Jim Brady had nine helpings and proclaimed himself more than well-satisfied.

"George," he said. "If you poured some of that sauce over a Turkish towel, I believe I could eat all of it!"

Reference :

The American Heritage Cookbook, Published by American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1964.