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Truffles, Buisson Of
Choose as many large round truffles as may be required, cleanse them thoroughly, stew them as for TRUFFLES A LA SERVIETTE, and let them cool in the liquor. Take a stale quartern loaf, cut off the crust, and carve the crumb to an oval shape. Place this upon a white napkin on a dish, cover with parsley, and stick about a dozen of the truffles all round it with silver skewers. Pile the rest on the top, and serve. Time to stew the truffles, nearly an hour. TRUFFLES, FOR GARNISH. Truffles which are to be used for garnishing various dishes may either be cleaned, pared, and boiled whole, then left to cool in their liquor, or they may be cut up into slices before being boiled. It should be remembered that the liquor in which they are boiled will be excellent for sauce, and that if well cleaned the parings may be stewed to flavour sauces. Many cooks boil the truffles whole, and afterwards cut them up into different shapes before using them for garnishing. Time to boil moderate-sized truffles for garnish, about a quarter of an hour. (See also GARNISH, TRUFFLES FOR.) TRUFFLES, IN MADEIRA. Take a dozen fine fresh truffles, wash and brush them well. Put them in a saucepan with enough Madeira to cover them a couple of cloves, a pinch of cayenne and mignonette pepper, and a little salt, and cook until tender. Then add half an ounce of glaze, and take the truffles out and keep them hot while the wine is boiled quickly for a few minutes. Add an ounce of butter, pour the whole over the truffles, and serve at once. Cost, variable.
TRUFFLES, POTTED. Wash, brush, peel, and slice six ounces of fresh truffles. Dissolve a pound of fresh butter; skim it carefully, pour it into a basin, and let it stand two or three minutes, then pour the pure oiled part away from the thick milky substance which will have settled at the bottom. Put the sliced truffles into a delicately-clean stewpan, and pour the butter gently over them. Let it stand until it is set, then put the saucepan on a slow fire, and stew the truffles very gently until they are tender. Lift them into dry preserving-jars, cover them with the butter, and store them in a cool and perfectly dry place. They will keep for months, and will be a most acceptable addition to the breakfast or luncheon table. The butter which remains after the truffles are thoroughly covered, so as to exclude the air, may be potted separately, and may be used for flavouring sauces and various delicate preparations. Time to stew the truffles, twenty minutes, or more.
Four separate truffle preparations run together in one dictionary entry: a decorative buisson, truffles for garnish, truffles in Madeira, and potted truffles. The first three are workable; the last is a low-acid preserve sealed under fat and stored for months at cellar temperature, which is why the caution above applies.
- Potted truffles: why notTruffles are soil-grown and carry Clostridium botulinum spores. Sealing them under butter creates exactly the anaerobic, low-acid, low-salt environment those spores need, and "a cool and perfectly dry place" for months is nowhere near cold enough to prevent toxin formation. No amount of gentle stewing in butter reaches spore-killing temperatures. If you want a keeping preparation, follow a current tested recipe; truffles cooked in butter and eaten within a couple of days in the refrigerator are a different matter entirely.
- The hinge: stewing timeNearly an hour of stewing suits firm winter truffles, but truffle aroma is volatile and much of it will be driven off; 10 to 20 minutes of the barest simmer is plenty, and modern practice is often to warm them through only briefly, or to shave them raw over hot food.
- Quartern loafA quartern loaf was baked from a quarter of a peck of flour and weighed about 4 lb — a large, tall domestic loaf. Any big, close-crumbed white loaf, a day or two old, will carve the same way; fresh bread tears instead of cutting cleanly.
- Buisson and the skewersBuisson is French for bush or thicket: the shaped bread is a hidden armature and the truffles are pinned to it so the pile looks self-supporting. The "silver skewers" are attelets, ornamental hors d'oeuvre skewers; short stainless or bamboo skewers do the job, and the parsley hides them.
- Mignonette pepperCoarsely cracked white peppercorns (sometimes a white-and-black mixture); the name is usually explained by a resemblance to mignonette seed, though that account is traditional rather than documented. Crack whole peppercorns under a pan rather than using fine ground pepper.
- GlazeHalf an ounce of glaze means glace de viande — brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm. A tablespoon of good demi-glace, or a reduced veal or beef stock, gives the same body and gloss to the Madeira.
- Madeira version, practicallyA dozen truffles will take a good deal of Madeira to cover, depending on their size and the pan, which is a serious outlay; a smaller batch in a narrow pan uses less. Use a dry or medium Madeira (Sercial or Verdelho), not a sweet Malmsey. Reduce the wine hard before whisking in the butter off the heat so it emulsifies rather than splits.
- Don't discard the liquorThe entry is right that the cooking liquor and even the peelings are worth more than the labour: strain them and reduce into a sauce. The same applies to the trimmings from carving truffles into garnish shapes.
- Truffles now"Cost, variable" was an understatement then and a joke now. Fresh Tuber melanosporum (Périgord, winter) or Tuber magnatum (Alba, white) run to hundreds per pound; summer truffle is cheaper and much fainter. For a garnish, good jarred or frozen truffles are a reasonable substitute; truffle oil is not, being mostly synthetic aroma compound.
Cassell's belongs to a period of grand display dining, when a dinner was judged partly on how it looked standing on the table, and the buisson — a pyramid built on a carved bread or rice core and studded with skewered food — was a standard trick of the pastry-cook and larder cook alike. Buissons were made of crayfish, of prawns, of cutlets, and here of truffles, the point being to present something absurdly expensive in a quantity that could not be missed. Truffles reached British kitchens mainly from Périgord and Provence, hunted with dogs or pigs and traded fresh through the winter, and their price is why the same entry carefully explains that the parings and the cooking liquor must go into the sauce. Potting under clarified butter was the standard Victorian answer to a short season, used for shrimps, beef, game and cheese as well; it worked well enough by the standards of the day, though the bacteriology that explains why it is a poor idea for a soil vegetable lay well in the future when this dictionary went to press.