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Truffle Sauce
Clean and peel 4 truffles, or use bottled truffles, and cut them into squares of a quarter of an inch each way. Put them into a stewpan with half a pint of good brown sauce, and stir over a gentle fire for ten minutes. Add a glassful of sherry, and, if liked, a tablespoonful of strained lemon juice, and serve. Time, ten minutes to boil the sauce. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A short compound sauce built on a made brown sauce, meant to be finished at the last moment. The truffle is a flavouring, not a vegetable to be cooked through, so the ten minutes is about marrying the sauce, not softening the dice.
- Brown sauce means espagnoleBrown sauce -- The base assumed here is a made brown sauce of the period: a brown roux moistened with veal or beef stock and simmered down, close to what French practice would call espagnole or, reduced, demi-glace. A modern reduced stock thickened lightly with beurre manie gives the same weight; a packet gravy will taste flat under truffle.
- Half a pintIn a British book of this period that is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 cups. Use a cup if working from US measures and expect a slightly thicker, more concentrated result.
- A glassful of sherryA wine glass in Victorian and Edwardian kitchens is roughly 2 fl oz (1/4 cup). Use a dry amontillado or oloroso rather than a cream sherry, and add it off the strongest heat so the alcohol softens without the sauce boiling down to syrup.
- Heat, not a boilDespite the note on time, keep the pan at a bare shiver. Truffle aroma is volatile and a rolling boil strips it; the same is true after the sherry goes in.
- Fresh versus bottled trufflesFour fresh truffles would be an extravagant amount by modern standards; 1 to 2 oz of fresh black truffle is ample for this quantity. Bottled or tinned truffles are already cooked and comparatively mild, so add them in the last two or three minutes and pour a little of their liquor into the sauce.
- PeelingPeelings from fresh black truffle are worth keeping. Steep them in the brown sauce while it heats and strain them out before adding the diced truffle, which extracts flavour the dice alone will not give up.
- The lemon juiceOptional in the original and best treated that way. A teaspoon lifts a heavy demi-glace; a full tablespoon can cut across the truffle, so add it at the very end and taste.
- Yield and useSomething under a pint once the sherry is in, enough for the four or five servings the recipe claims. It is a sauce for plain roast or poached poultry, fillet of beef, or eggs.