How do pan sauces not split? (long discussion on emulsions, gravy/pan sauces)

[BAPyessir6]

Question first, then long discussion point! How do pan sauces not split/stay emulsified if they're just water and fat? Vinaigrette doesn't really stay together, but a heavily reduced meat stock mounted with butter (or cream) at the end will remain emulsified. As will berre blanc.

To my knowledge, a gravy, bechamel, or veloute has a basic component structure of fat, flour/thickener, and water/water based liquid/milk/stock etc. This makes sense to me as flour or starch (or emulsifier like egg yolk in hollandaise) acts as a binder/suspender, holding the fat in the water.

A pan sauce on the other hand, generally has just salt/water (in the form of stock, fond, pan drippings), some sort of acid (wine, beer to deglaze etc) and then some sort of fat. (Cold butter. . .why cold? Or cream, other dairy, etc.)

Was at a church friend's house for supper and he made his world famous gravy. (Is it actually gravy if it doesn't have a starch?) Basically pot roast (beef) drippings and fond, a bottle of white wine (Chardonnay) and like 2 qt. cream at the end. It was good, peppery, albeit kind of sweet from all the white wine. Though I am, as I've said before, sensitive to alcoholic components, as I don't drink.

How do sauces like this stay stable? Is it because you get to an almost "au sec" point in the pan before adding the dairy? I know cream is actually very hard to break the emulsion of, but what about butter?

Could you mount or finish a pan sauce with milk or a lower fat dairy? Or is the fat/specific temperature somehow essential to the emulsion, like in beurre blanc? Would getting the pan too hot break a basic pan sauce as well, as it would for beurre blanc?

I'm probably rambling, but I'm curious how/why pan sauces don't need a stabilizer/emulsifier. Like I intuitively know that they work, but I don't understand the how.

 

[jennyema]

Serious Eats will explain it all

How to Make a Pan Sauce, and How to Fix a Broken One

Pan sauces make use of the tasty browned bits left on the bottom of the pan after searing meat, called fond. Here are tricks and techniques for making a pan sauce.

www.seriouseats.com

 

[taxlady]

I vaguely remember that the butter is supposed to be cold to keep it from melting too fast. It should emulsify with the liquid from the solid state without getting to the more liquid oily state. Or something like that.

 

[BAPyessir6]

I vaguely remember that the butter is supposed to be cold to keep it from melting too fast. It should emulsify with the liquid from the solid state without getting to the more liquid oily state. Or something like that.

Like how you need to add oil very slowly to mayo/hollandaise, whereas adding oil too fast and it'll split? So the butter needs to be cold when added to the sauce so it doesn't "overwhelm" the sauce and break the emulsion?

 

[taxlady]

Like how you need to add oil very slowly to mayo/hollandaise, whereas adding oil too fast and it'll split? So the butter needs to be cold when added to the sauce so it doesn't "overwhelm" the sauce and break the emulsion?

Hmm, so the butter doesn't overwhelm the sauce. I like that description. I don't know if it is right, but I like it.