How Is Overwhelming Flavor Done??

In no particular order.

Layering flavours and seasonings.

Reductions

Infusions

Drying and Reconstituting items (dehydration)

Properly extracting flavours (distillation,  rotovaps etc.)

Combining flavours with specific textures (Molecular Gastronomy)

Vapourizing flavour compounds

There are many ways, some old some new and even some old that are done in new ways.

What kind of sauce?

Might be able to help with more specifics.

Arguably the hardest art to master.

Absolutely the hardest one in which to blaze your own trail.

Why couldn't it be a reduction? Would depend upon what is being reduced, I would think.

Start by asking for the name.

BDL

One preparation of beef tongue that I have done in the past is a miso marinated beef tongue with a chinkiang demi sauce. I would describe the dish as fairly intense. It utilized ingredients that hit the five different elements of taste perception, as well as the technique of reduction to hit a good intensity level.

mrdecoy,

Could it have been some sort of gastrique- turned sauce ? I know its a long shot but when I here of vinegar in a sauce, it came to mind. Then again vinegar or mustard can really make a dish pop. As Mike mentioned, its the layers of flavors that will give it that depth of body.

Petals.

The braising liquid is likely to be stock, wine, mirepoix, a few herbs, and perhaps some tomato paste. 

On the basis of your very sketchy description, I'd start with a pincage (saute a mirepoix until soft, add some tomato paste, and cook the paste until it's browned), add the braising liquid along with a little more wine and a little bit of Dijon mustard, reduce for awhile, sieve the aromatics out after they've given their all, and continue reducing.  The reduction level sounds about the same as a demi-glace which -- if starch isn't used to thicken -- is about 5 to 1. 

I'm going to disagree with Chef Petals.  Gastriques start with sweetness, sometimes with caramelized sugars -- often from sauteing fruit, then adding vinegar and sometimes stock.  If the sauce didn't taste strongly sweet and sour, it wasn't a gastrique.  Since you didn't mention it, I'm guessing it didn't cross the threshold.  But it's a soft term, we could both be right.

You never really mentioned sweetness, but did mention A-1.  A-1 gets its sweetness from raisins, mostly.  Raisins are not an uncommon ingredient for making tongue, you may want to add them somewhere.   

Foie (not foix) gras. 

BDL

I get asked the same for my turkey stuffing and the gravy. I premake stock and for both will reduce 6 quarts down to 1 quart. Use it to wet the stuffing and to add to the pan drippings for the gravy. Very intense turkey flavor.

BDL nailed it.  My definition is a classical French take off on a sweet and sour sauce, almost always frut based. Not done to much anymore though, at least I have not seenit on menues for some time, A long time ago Isaw one being made for beedf tongue using raisins and plums.

Posted by mrdecoy1 

In terms of the sauce, you're probably looking at something very much like a demi-glace derivative.  The concentration of flavor is very much a matter of reduction.  The trick with a demi, such as it is, is to balance and round the meat flavor of the stock with wine, aromatics -- and in the case of beef a little bit of tomato.

In order to make sure the sauce stays smooth and doesn't taste over-reduced you want to do the reduction in stages.  In other words, reduce some stock (or braising liquid), then add a mix of fresh stock and wine and reduce some more.  As I already wrote, build a pincage for the first stock reduction in order to get some structure and sweetness from the tomato paste.

There's a lot of room for improvisation with ingredients.  For instance you can substitute Madeira, Sherry or Cognac for the wine, or even mix them.  Because tongue likes a hint of sweetness, I'd go with Madeira (an inexpensive Madeira like the one from San Antonio Winery which is available at Trader Joe's) all the way.  But Cognac makes things so very smooth and elegant -- it would be a very nice touch.  By way of another example, if you were looking for something particularly Mediterranean you might accent the sauce with a sprig of rosemary early in the reduction process and a few capers for garnish at the end.  If you wanted to go Baltic you could chop some tarragon and parsley and add that to the sauce just as you took it off the flame.  Anyway, you get the idea. 

Cooking is a kind of jazz; freshening a standard with a few twists. 

And yes... foie gras rocks.

BDL

PS.  Sorry about the spelling correction, but here's another one.  Palate, not palette. 

Very good info here, thank you for sharing.

Here is a Hunter sauce with a few additions of my own for tongue. I made the sauce, added roasted garlic, pear puree coffee, wine...reduced.

Petals.

A hunter sauce is just a demi-glace or you can use an espagnole, with the addition of mushrooms and shallots. You don't need a book for this sauce, that is if you go into the search bar, there are many topics on making your basic demi. Have you ever made a sauce from scratch ?

Once you have made the sauce the rest is fairly simple.

Petals.

Go to the library and pick up Guide Culinaire (esscofier cookbook)  This has every classic sauce that you could need. La rousse is also good.

Start with demi s   ,brown sauces, compound and tomato sauces as well as bechamel. Or as the were called The Mother Sauces, You will see that one builds to others with addition of some other ingredients.

The Japanese method of layering makes a pretty intense broth.  First start with a kombu.  Soak it in hot water, remove.  Then Bonito flake.  Boil, remove.  That's your base.  Maybe pork necks and chicken bones next, mushrooms, etc.  Who knows.

There are many good books on sauce making.  Two stand out: 

• Sauces:  Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making, by James Peterson; and
• The Sauce Bible:  Guide to the Saucier's Craft, by David Larousse.

Both are available in softback, hardback, and used hardback on Amazon.  Peterson is probably better for the home cook.

Escoffier's Guide Culinaire is very dated.  The cookbook which most influenced my cooking -- as a professional cook, caterer, and home cook -- was Modern French Culinary Art aka The Great Book of French Cuisine by Pelliprat.  In many ways it's similar to Escoffier, the most important for you is that while both are interesting, neither is a good place to start learning contemporary cooking.  If you have an interest in sauce recipes which you can follow with modern techniques and clear explanations I strongly urge you to go with something more modern such as the Peterson and Larousse books.

In my opinion.

BDL