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Garnish, Truffles For
Wash the truffles by rinsing them in several waters until they are quite free from sand. Put them into some good stock, and let them boil gently for fifteen minutes. They should cool in the liquid. Slice for use.
A preparation step rather than a dish: truffles cooked and cooled in stock so they can be sliced for decorating aspics, galantines and chaud-froids. The method assumes fresh winter truffles caked in soil, which is the part worth knowing.
- The hinge: cool in the liquidThe instruction to let them cool in the stock is not incidental. Truffles lose aroma fast once heated and drained; leaving them to cool in the liquid keeps the flesh from drying to a crumb at the cut edge, and is generally held to preserve more of the scent than draining them hot.
- Fifteen minutes is for raw fresh truffleA firm fresh black truffle can take a gentle simmer of that length. If you are working with jarred or canned truffles, they are already cooked and pasteurised; a warming through in stock off the boil is all they need, and longer will empty them of scent.
- Washing"Several waters" means exactly that with soil-packed truffles. Use a soft brush under cool running water and work the crevices; grit left behind ruins every slice cut from that tuber. Do not soak them, which waterlogs the flesh.
- "Good stock"Read this as a well-flavoured, lightly salted veal or chicken stock, not a thick reduced glaze. It should taste pleasant on its own, since the truffle will take some of its flavour on. Keep the salt low; the stock afterwards is worth saving for a sauce.
- SlicingChill thoroughly before cutting, and use a truffle shaver or a mandoline for slices thin enough to be translucent. The entry files this under garnish, so thin, even slices are what it is aiming at; uniform thinness matters more than the size of the piece.
- Cost and substitutionFresh black truffle is now a luxury priced by the gram, and this recipe treats it as decoration. Preserved truffle in small jars will do the same visual job. Chinese truffle sold cheaply looks the part but has little aroma; do not expect the stock to gain anything from it.
- YieldA single small truffle, well chilled and shaved thin, will go a surprisingly long way as garnish. Cooked truffles are best used within a few days, kept covered in their stock in the refrigerator.
Victorian and Edwardian cookery used the truffle as much for its colour as its scent: a jet-black slice against pale chicken forcemeat and clear amber jelly was the standard vocabulary of the cold table, alongside pistachio green, ox-tongue pink and hard-boiled egg white. This entry accordingly sits under garnishes rather than among the vegetables. The truffles reaching British kitchens when Cassell's was compiled included the black Périgord truffle from south-western France, arriving fresh in winter or, increasingly through the later nineteenth century, tinned and preserved so that a cook could keep them on the shelf year-round. The whole approach is one no modern kitchen would take: truffle was expensive then too, but it was treated as a material to be cut into shapes, and the boiling stock that carried away part of its aroma was regarded as a bonus for the sauce rather than a loss.