French cuisine French cuisine is the cooking traditions and practices of France. In the 14th century, Guillaume Tirel, a Court (royal), court chef known as "Taillevent", wrote ''Le Viandier'', one of the earliest recipe collections of medieval France. In ...

, ''à la zingara'' ( lit. "gypsy style"), sometimes spelled as ''à la singara'', is a garnish or

sauce In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi- solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavour, texture, and visual appeal to a dish. ''Sauce'' is a French wor ...

consisting of chopped

ham Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking."Bacon: Bacon and Ham Curing" in '' Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 39. As a processed meat, the term '' ...

tongue The tongue is a Muscle, muscular organ (anatomy), organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for chewing and swallowing as part of the digestive system, digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper s ...

mushrooms A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or another food source. ''Toadstool'' generally refers to a poisonous mushroom. The standard for the name "mushroom" is ...

and

truffles A truffle is the fruiting body of a subterranean ascomycete fungus, one of the species of the genus ''Tuber''. More than one hundred other genera of fungi are classified as truffles including '' Geopora'', '' Peziza'', '' Choiromyces'', and ' ...

combined with

tomato sauce Tomato sauce (; ; ) can refer to many different sauces made primarily from tomatoes. In some countries the term refers to a sauce to be served as part of a dish, in others it is a condiment. Tomatoes have a rich flavor, high water content, s ...

tarragon Tarragon (''Artemisia dracunculus''), also known as estragon, is a species of perennial herbaceous plant, herb in the family Asteraceae. It is widespread in the wild across much of Eurasia and North America and is cultivated for culinary and medic ...

and sometimes

madeira Madeira ( ; ), officially the Autonomous Region of Madeira (), is an autonomous Regions of Portugal, autonomous region of Portugal. It is an archipelago situated in the North Atlantic Ocean, in the region of Macaronesia, just under north of ...

. Additional ingredients may include white wine, cayenne pepper, lemon juice and orange rind. The sauce is prepared by cooking the ingredients until the mixture reduces and thickens. This garnish is served with meat such as veal, poultry and sometimes eggs. Gypsy sauce (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

: Zigeunersauce) may have originated from à la zingara. Gypsy sauce is prepared using many of the same ingredients as à la zingara. Simpler versions of gypsy sauce, including commercial varieties, typically use a lesser amount of ingredients, such as

tomato paste Tomato paste is a thick paste made from tomatoes, which are cooked for several hours to reduce water content, straining out seeds and skins, and cooking the liquid again to reduce the base to a thick, rich concentrate. It is used to impart an i ...

, Hungarian

paprika Paprika is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers, traditionally ''capsicum annuum''. It can have varying levels of Pungency, heat, but the peppers used for hot paprika tend to be milder and have thinner flesh than those used to produce ...

bell pepper The bell pepper (also known as sweet pepper, paprika, pepper, capsicum or, in some parts of the US midwest, mango) is the fruit of plants in the Grossum Group of the species ''Capsicum annuum''. Cultivars of the plant produce fruits in diff ...

s and sometimes onion.

À la zingara

À la zingara has sometimes been referred to as singara and zingara sauce. Conversely, à la zingara has also been referred to as separate from zingara sauce, such as in the 2009 book ''Dictionary of Food'' authored by Charles Sinclair and published by

Bloomsbury Publishing Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. Bloomsbury's head office is located on Bedford Square in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a US publishing office located in ...

, which has separate entries for à la zingara and zingara sauce, referring to à la zingara as "''France'' In the gypsy style, i.e. with ham, tongue, mushrooms and tomatoes" and zingara sauce as "''France'' A sauce for veal and poultry made to a variety of recipes and little used." An 1869 recipe for blonde veal cutlets with ham à la zingara uses

espagnole sauce Espagnole sauce () is a basic brown sauce, and is one of the mother sauces of classic French cooking. In the early 19th century the chef Antonin Carême included it in his list of the basic sauces of French cooking. In the early 20th century ...

and ham. The espagnole sauce is cooked with the veal, and then later the fat is skimmed from the sauce, which is then run through a

sieve A sieve (), fine mesh strainer, or sift is a tool used for separating wanted elements from unwanted material or for controlling the particle size distribution of a sample, using a screen such as a woven mesh or net or perforated sheet m ...

, after which it is served with the dish. An 1858 recipe for veal cutlets à la zingara is similar, with the addition of mushrooms and truffles in the center of the dish surrounding the veal and ham. After the meats are cooked and plated, The espagnole sauce is cooked in the pan the veal was cooked in, lemon juice and cayenne pepper are added, and then the sauce is poured over the cutlets.

Gypsy sauce

Gypsy sauce is a

demi-glace Demi-glace (, 'half glaze') is a rich brown sauce in French cuisine used by itself or as a base for other sauces. The term comes from the French word ''glace'', which, when used in reference to a sauce, means "icing" or "glaze." It is traditi ...

sauce used as an ingredient in dishes and as a

condiment A condiment is a preparation that is added to food, typically after cooking, to enhance the Flavoring, flavour, to complement the dish or to impart a specific flavor. Such specific flavors generally add sweetness or pungency, or sharp or piquant ...

. The term “''Zigeuner''” has been used in Germany for over a century regarding the sauce. Some companies mass-produce it, including Remia, Verstegen and

Unilever Unilever PLC () is a British multinational consumer packaged goods company headquartered in London, England. It was founded on 2 September 1929 following the merger of Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie with British soap maker Lever B ...

. Some controversy occurred in 2013 regarding use of the word "gypsy" on the labels of commercial varieties of the sauce and at German public building cafeterias.

Etymology

The term ''Zigeuner'' has been used for over 100 years in Germany in reference to the sauce. This term was used in the 1903 book ''

Le guide culinaire ''Le Guide Culinaire'' () is Georges Auguste Escoffier's 1903 French restaurant cuisine cookbook, his first. It is regarded as a classic and still in print. Escoffier developed the recipes while working at the Savoy, Ritz and Carlton hotels fro ...

'' written by

Auguste Escoffier Georges Auguste Escoffier (; 28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer who popularised and updated traditional French cooking methods. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-A ...

History

Gypsy sauce is used in Austrian, French and

German cuisine The cuisine of Germany consists of many different local or regional cuisines, reflecting the country's federal history. Germany itself is part of the larger cultural region of Central Europe, sharing many culinary traditions with neighbouring c ...

Preparation

Contemporary gypsy sauce is typically prepared using

, Hungarian

s and sometimes onion. It may be prepared as a spicy-hot sauce. Canned whole or crushed tomatoes are sometimes used. Additional ingredients used in its preparation include onion, garlic, chicken broth, milk, a sweetener such as sugar or honey, salt and pepper. Another preparation of the sauce includes tomato slices or tomato purée, onions, smoked

, ham, mushrooms,

truffle A truffle is the Sporocarp (fungi), fruiting body of a subterranean ascomycete fungus, one of the species of the genus ''Tuber (fungus), Tuber''. More than one hundred other genera of fungi are classified as truffles including ''Geopora'', ''P ...

s, white wine or Madeira wine, butter, paprika and pepper, which is very similar to the preparation of à la zingara. The simpler preparation of the sauce may have originated from the more complex à la zingara sauce.

Production

Gypsy sauce is commercially

mass-produced Mass production, also known as mass production, series production, series manufacture, or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. ...

by some companies, such as Remia, Verstegen and

, which is marketed under Unilever's Knorr brand name.

Use in dishes

Gypsy sauce is used in the preparation of '' Zigeunerschnitzel'', a German

schnitzel Schnitzel () is a thin slice of meat. The meat is usually thinned by pounding with a meat tenderizer. Most commonly, the meat is breaded before frying. Breaded schnitzel is popular in many countries and is made using veal, pork, Chicken as foo ...

dish.

Name controversy

In August 2013, a group representing Romani and

Sinti The Sinti (masc. sing. ''Sinto''; fem. sing. ''Sintetsa, Sinta'') are a subgroup of the Romani people. They are found mostly in Germany, France, Italy and Central Europe, numbering some 200,000 people. They were traditionally Itinerant groups i ...

peoples called for commercial varieties of the sauce to be renamed, stating that use of the word ''gypsy'' is offensive and discriminatory, and has negative connotations. The group requested that five German food companies rename the sauce, suggesting using the name "spicy sauce" or another similar name. Authorities in

Hanover Hanover ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Lower Saxony. Its population of 535,932 (2021) makes it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-l ...

, Germany, issued an internal memo in October 2013 informing city staffers that they should avoid using the term to describe a type of schnitzel served in the

cafeteria A cafeteria, called canteen outside the U.S., is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether in a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a scho ...

s of city-run public buildings, instead calling it "Balkan-style" or "Budapest-style". During this time, food manufacturers essentially opposed renaming the commercial brands of the sauce. The German Association of Culinary Foodstuffs Manufacturers stated through a spokesperson that the sauce has significant

brand recognition Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand under different conditions. Brand awareness is one of the two key components of brand knowledge, as defined by the associative network memory model. It plays ...

under this name, and that the word ''gypsy'' has been used for over 100 years to represent the sauce. However, in August 2020, companies such as Knorr replaced the name with "Hungarian-style paprika sauce", citing the recent debates about racism, spurred by the

George Floyd protests The George Floyd protests were a series of protests, riots, and demonstrations against police brutality that began in Minneapolis in the United States on May 26, 2020. The protests and civil unrest began in Minneapolis as Reactions to the mu ...

Notes

References

External links

"Gipsy Sauce and the Rest"
Theoldfoodie.com. {{DEFAULTSORT:A la zingara Zingara, a la Food ingredients Name changes due to the George Floyd protests Sauces 2013 controversies Romani-related controversies