Home › Vegetables › Truffles aux Champagne
Truffles aux Champagne
On the subject of truffles prepared in this way, the late Alexandre Dumas' "Dictionnaire Gastronomique" waxes enthusiastic. "What," he says, "can be more exhilarating, more divine, than truffles aux Champagne? Take a pound of truffles, pour a bottle of Ai mousseux into a saucepan; throw in the truffles, together with a little salt, and let them boil in the wine for half an hour; then serve them hot on a snow-white napkin. Who could resist the power of this composition, which charms the palate and tickles the fancy? How its enchanting aroma caresses, flatters, and rejoices!"
A quotation that happens to contain a complete method: truffles poached in sparkling wine and served plain. It is worth reading for what it says about nineteenth-century truffle cookery, though almost every practical detail wants adjusting before money is spent.
- The half hour is the problemThirty minutes at a boil strips a fresh truffle of most of its aroma, which is volatile and leaves with the steam. Current practice is a bare simmer for ten to fifteen minutes for whole fresh black truffles, lid on, and the poaching wine kept and reduced rather than discarded.
- Aï mousseuxAÿ mousseux -- Sparkling wine from Aÿ, a noted Champagne village in the Marne, near Épernay. Any dry sparkling wine will do the same work; the bubbles are lost within seconds of heating, so nothing is gained by using a bottle you would rather drink.
- A pound of trufflesRoughly 450 g, which in Dumas's day was an extravagance and today is a serious sum of money — fresh black winter truffles run to hundreds of dollars per pound. Preserved or canned truffles are already cooked and will not survive this treatment; brushed, unpeeled fresh ones are what the method assumes.
- The saucepanUse one just large enough that the bottle of wine covers the truffles. A wide pan means more surface, faster evaporation, and truffles left dry and stranded partway through.
- Serving on a napkinA standard nineteenth-century service for anything drained hot: the folded linen absorbs the last of the liquid and keeps the truffles from sitting in a puddle. A warmed dish lined with a clean cloth serves the same purpose.