Recipes

Mary Berry's Peppercorn Sauce

The sauce that turns a plain pan-fried steak into something worth sitting down for, and it can be finished a day early and reheated — so the only thing left to do at dinner time is cook the meat.

Total time
20 min estimated — the source gives no total time
Serves
4

Course Sauce/Condiment

Cuisine French

Main ingredient Cream Peppercorns

Techniques reducing

Tags make-aheaddinner-party

Ingredients

  • 100 g (100 ml) beef stock
  • ½ garlic clove, crushed
  • 2 tbsp brandy
  • 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
  • 150 g (150 ml) double cream
  • ½ tsp black peppercorns, crushed
  • 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
  • salt, to taste

Instructions

  1. Pour the stock into a small saucepan and bring it to the boil. Let it boil until half of it has gone — this is the step the sauce's savouriness comes from, and it takes only a few minutes at that volume.
  2. Add the garlic, brandy, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, cream and crushed peppercorns. Stir, then bring the pan back to the boil over a high heat.
  3. Season with salt and keep it at a boil, stirring regularly, until it has thickened to the consistency of pouring cream. Stir the parsley through and serve.

Notes & tips

From the source.

  • It can be made up to a day ahead, covered and kept in the fridge.
  • Halve everything for two. The source gives the sauce as the right quantity for four steaks and says to halve it for a dinner for two.
  • The sauce is built in its own saucepan, not in the steak pan. No fond is deglazed, which is why it can be made a day early and why nothing about it depends on the steaks being cooked first.
  • What the source serves it with: chips, mashed potato or Lyonnaise potatoes, with steamed greens or a plain salad alongside.

Source

Mary Berry, Fillet steak with peppercorn sauce, BBC Food, 20 March 2017 — from Mary Berry Everyday.

This file is the sauce only. The source recipe also flattens, butters and pan-fries four centre-cut fillet steaks to serve it over; none of that is transcribed here. Instructions rewritten. The source's millilitres converted to weight at the conversion table's figures for stock and for cream, both 100 g/dl.