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Truffles au Naturel
INGREDIENTS. Truffles, buttered paper.
Select some fine truffles; cleanse them, by washing them in several waters with a brush, until not a particle of sand or grit remains on them; wrap each truffle in buttered paper, and bake in a hot oven for truffles, and serve them in a hot napkin.
TIME.-1 hour. whole, like smelts. Trout dressed à la Génévèse quite an hour; take off the paper, wipe the is extremely delicate; for this proceed the same as with salmon.
The text as printed has collapsed two entries together — the closing lines about trout dressed à la Génévèse belong to a neighbouring recipe and should be ignored. What remains is one of the simplest treatments of fresh truffle there is: scrub, wrap, bake, serve.
- Read past the printer's errorThe sentences about smelts and salmon are stray type from the Trout entry. The truffle recipe ends at "serve them in a hot napkin."
- The hinge is the washingTruffles grow underground and hold grit in every fold. Wash in several changes of cold water with a stiff brush until the water runs clear, and dry them completely before wrapping, or the paper steams rather than bakes.
- "A hot oven"Around 425-450F. The parcel protects the truffle from direct heat, so the temperature matters less than the timing.
- An hour is too longOvens were unreliable and truffles vary greatly in size. A modern fresh truffle of 1-2 oz needs about 20 minutes at 425F; 40-45 minutes suits a specimen the size of a small potato. A full hour will dry out anything under 3 oz and waste a great deal of money.
- Buttered paperParchment, buttered generously, then twisted closed at the ends — in effect cooking en papillote. A double layer holds the aroma better. Foil works but traps more moisture.
- Which truffleThis most likely means fresh black winter truffle (Tuber melanosporum), which stands up to heat. Fresh white Alba truffle should not be baked; it is shaved raw over hot food. Most truffle oil is a synthetic flavouring and is useless here.
- ServingThe hot napkin is not decoration — it keeps the truffle warm at table and catches the aroma released when the paper is opened. Allow one truffle per person, and serve nothing with it but butter and salt.
Au naturel is the plainest of all truffle preparations: no forcemeat, no Madeira, no garnish, only the tuber, paper and heat. The older French method buried the wrapped truffle in hot wood ash, and the buttered paper here works to similar effect. England had its own truffle trade — truffle hunters worked the beech woods of Wiltshire, Hampshire and Kent with trained dogs well into the early twentieth century, when the industry died out. An entry for serving one whole in a napkin belongs to the more ambitious end of the book.