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TRUFFLES (a la Serviette)
Wash the truffles in several waters, brush them thoroughly to free them from earth and grit, and drain them. Line a stewpan with thin slices of fat bacon, put in the truffles, cover with rich veal gravy, and add a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, two bay-leaves, five or six cloves, a bunch of small onions, and three or four sticks of celery, with a glassful of wine or not. Simmer the truffles gently until done enough, and let them get cold in the liquor. When wanted for table heat them again, drain them well, and dish them in a folded napkin. Truffles a la Serviette are usually sent to table with a little cold butter on a separate dish, and without sauce. Time to simmer, half to three-quarters of an hour.
A whole-truffle dish from the era when black truffles were expensive but not extravagant, and were served as a course in their own right. Almost everything here depends on the quality of the truffles themselves; the technique is simple.
- The hinge: cool them in the liquorCool them in the liquor -- The truffles are not served straight from the pot: the recipe has them go cold in the cooking liquid and be heated again when wanted. The usual explanation is that this lets them take up the flavoured braise rather than shed aroma as steam.
- Which truffleThe recipe names no variety, but it reads as written for fresh whole winter black truffles (Tuber melanosporum), firm and unpeeled, in season roughly December to March. Preserved or canned truffles have already been cooked and need only warming, not a long braise. Summer truffle (T. aestivum) is milder and cheaper but will not carry a dish where the truffle is the only thing on the plate.
- Fat baconRead this as the fat of plain unsmoked bacon, or failing that fresh pork fat or fatback, sliced thin to line the pan; heavily smoked streaky bacon will overwhelm the truffle. Blanch salt pork briefly if that is all you have.
- Rich veal gravyA brown veal stock reduced until it has body — what a modern kitchen would call a light demi-glace. Enough to cover the truffles, which in a small deep pan is less than you would think.
- A glassful of wineThe measure is imprecise; a wineglassful of the period is usually reckoned at around 2 fl oz (60 ml), and the recipe leaves the wine optional in any case. Madeira, sherry and Champagne all appear with truffles in other versions of the dish.
- TimingThe recipe gives half to three-quarters of an hour, at a bare simmer with no boiling. 'Done enough' is left to the cook's judgement, and smaller truffles will need less than the full time.
- Quantity and servingNo yield is given. The dish is intended as a course on its own, not a garnish. The recipe says only to heat the truffles again before draining and dishing them; the liquor they cooled in is the obvious medium.
- The napkinÀ la serviette means the drained truffles are piled in a folded linen napkin on a hot dish, the cloth absorbing residual moisture and holding the heat. Use plain unstarched linen; do not use paper. Good unsalted butter on the side is the whole of the sauce.
- Do not discard the braiseThe strained cooking liquor is intensely flavoured and worth keeping for a sauce or for eggs. The bacon fat and aromatics have given it as much as the truffles took away.
Serving something à la serviette — in a folded napkin — was a nineteenth-century French convention for foods that needed to arrive hot and dry, and it was applied to whole black truffles and boiled new potatoes as well as to fish, puddings and other boiled items. Truffles in this period came overwhelmingly from Périgord, Provence and Piedmont; French production was near its historic peak in the late 1800s, before the First World War and rural depopulation broke up the old truffle oak plantations, and prices in London kitchens were high but not the luxury they became in the twentieth century. The instruction to line the pan with fat bacon reflects the standing belief that truffle aroma is fat-soluble and is best trapped rather than allowed to escape — a piece of received kitchen wisdom that turns out to be broadly correct.