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Périgord Sauce (Rich Brown Sauce with Truffles)
(Rich Brown Sauce with Truffles and Wine.) Ingredients.
One gill of Brown Sauce.
One gill of Tomato Sauce.
Three large Truffles.
One glass of Sherry.
A teaspoonful of Anchovy Essence.
One ounce of Butter.
Chop up the truffles and put them into a small stewpan with the sherry, cover it and reduce it H2 to one half; add the brown and the tomato sauces, boil a few minutes, stir in the butter and anchovy essence, let it boil up well, skim it, and it is ready for use.
A short, concentrated truffle sauce built on two pre-made mother sauces, so almost all the work is in what you bring to it. Read the note on the butter before you start.
- The hinge: the butter goes in last and barely cooksThe hinge: the butter goes in last -- The original stirs in butter and anchovy and then boils the sauce up so it can be skimmed. A hard boil after the butter risks splitting the finish and driving off truffle aroma, so if you want a glossier sauce, swirl the butter in off the heat and return it only briefly to the heat; you will then need to skim before the butter goes in rather than after.
- A gill is half a cupA gill is a quarter pint -- In Victorian British usage that is about 5 imperial fl oz (roughly 140 ml) per gill, though the measure was not wholly standard and the US gill is 4 fl oz (120 ml). A "glass" of sherry here means a wine glass of the period, roughly 2 fl oz (60 ml); a modern pour of 5 oz will swamp the sauce.
- "Brown Sauce" means espagnole or demi-glaceNot bottled brown sauce of the HP type. Use a proper reduced brown stock sauce, or good demi-glace loosened with stock. If it is thin, reduce it first, because this sauce is not thickened again later.
- Anchovy essenceA Victorian bottled extract, saltier and thinner than modern anchovy paste. Start with half a teaspoon of anchovy paste, or a teaspoon of colatura, and taste before adding more; the sherry and demi-glace are already assertive.
- Three large trufflesThat is a Victorian country-house quantity, perhaps 60-90 g of black truffle. Modern practice is to use far less and add most of it at the end: reduce a little truffle peeling or juice in the sherry, then stir in finely chopped fresh truffle off the heat so the volatile aroma survives.
- Truffle oil is not a substituteMost is flavoured with synthetic 2,4-dithiapentane and turns harsh when reduced. Preserved truffle in its own juice, added late, is a nearer thing.
- "H2" is a printing artifactIt carries no instruction. Simply reduce the sherry and truffles, covered, until halved.
- YieldRoughly a cup of finished sauce, enough for four to six portions. Skim thoroughly as directed; the fat that rises from demi-glace will otherwise streak the plate.
Périgord, in south-western France, is the historic home of the black winter truffle, Tuber melanosporum, and by the nineteenth century its name on a menu functioned as a guarantee of truffle: sauce Périgueux, pâté de Périgord, poularde à la périgourdine. The classic French version is a demi-glace with truffle essence and chopped truffle, and the tomato sauce and sherry here reflect the Anglo-French kitchen of the period, where a little tomato and a fortified wine were often used to round out a brown sauce.