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TRUFFLE SAUCE (another way) (Take half a pound)
Take half a pound of well-cleaned and peeled truffles. Put them into a stewpan with as much brown gravy as will cover them, and put with them a bunch of parsley, a small sprig of thyme, a shallot, and an ounce of butter. Let them simmer very gently until tender, and when they are half done put a glassful of sherry into the sauce. Take them out, drain them, and cut them into thin slices. Strain the gravy, thicken it with a little brown thickening, heat the slices in the sauce, and serve very hot. Time to boil the truffles, about one hour.
A Victorian sauce built on the classic brown gravy of the professional kitchen, and one whose quantities are worth reading twice before you shop.
- The truffles are the whole expenseHalf a pound of fresh truffles is, at current prices, a sum most cooks will not spend on a sauce. Native English summer truffles (Tuber aestivum) were gathered in this period and were cheaper than the imported aromatic winter black (Tuber melanosporum), though truffles of any kind remained a luxury. Scaling to 2-3 oz and stretching the gravy gives a workable sauce.
- "Brown gravy" is not gravyIt means a rich reduced brown meat stock or sauce from the stockpot, closer in character to a French brown sauce than to anything bottled. Use a strong reduced brown stock.
- "Brown thickening"A brown roux, flour cooked in butter until nut-coloured, which some period books direct be made up in advance and kept. A tablespoon each of butter and flour cooked to a hazelnut brown, whisked into the strained gravy, is the equivalent.
- A glassful of sherryThe recipe says only "a glassful"; a Victorian wine glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, roughly a quarter cup. Dry or medium sherry, not cream sherry.
- An hour is too longTruffle aroma is volatile and largely lost to a long simmer; 20-30 minutes at a bare tremble is enough for fresh truffles, and preserved or tinned ones need only warming through in the finished sauce.
- PeelingThe peelings are worth keeping — chop them finely and add them to the gravy for flavour, then strain them out with the herbs as directed.
- Heat, do not reboilOnce the sliced truffles go back into the thickened sauce, bring it only to a bare simmer. Boiling flattens the perfume that justifies the ingredient.
- Yield and useThe gravy is measured only as "as much as will cover" the truffles, so the yield depends on the pan; expect a small quantity. It is a sauce for roast or braised beef fillet, poached poultry, sweetbreads, or game, spooned over rather than served in quantity.
Truffle sauces of this kind belong to the Anglo-French repertoire that Cassell's is often said to have been setting down for a mid-Victorian household with a cook and a stockpot: everything begins with a reserved brown sauce, and the luxury ingredient is added at the end. That a compiler could casually specify half a pound reflects a period when England still had a working truffle trade of its own ruon on chalk downland, and truffle hunters with trained dogs were recorded in Wiltshire and Hampshire into the late nineteenth century, the last of them generally said to have given up some time afterwards. The convention of poaching truffles in gravy with wine, then slicing and returning them, comes from French practice; the shallot, thyme and parsley bundle belongs to the professional fonds.