Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › D'Uxelles Garnish
D'Uxelles Garnish
This is composed of fine herbs and Madeira sauce prepared as follows: Reduce one breakfast cupful of cooked fine herbs with a teacupful of Madeira sauce in a saucepan on a moderately-heated stove for about ten minutes, or until it is thick.
A component preparation rather than a dish: two things Oscar assumes you already have on hand are cooked down together into a thick, spoonable garnish for meats, poultry and stuffed vegetables.
- What "fine herbs" means hereIn this book the phrase covers the classic duxelles base -- mushrooms and shallot chopped very fine and cooked in butter until the moisture is gone -- often with parsley and sometimes a little onion. It is not a handful of fresh green herbs, and a mixture of chopped tarragon and chervil will not stand in.
- Madeira sauceA brown sauce: demi-glace or a reduced veal stock finished with Madeira. A jarred demi-glace concentrate loosened with stock and a splash of dry Madeira gets you to roughly the right place; sweet Madeira will make the garnish cloying.
- Breakfast cup and teacupA breakfast cup is the large one, about 10 to 12 fluid ounces, so call it 1 1/4 cups of the cooked mushroom mixture. A teacup is smaller, around 6 fluid ounces, or 3/4 cup of sauce. The ratio matters more than the absolute amounts -- roughly three parts mushroom to two parts sauce.
- "Moderately-heated stove"A steady medium heat, enough to keep the pan at a lazy simmer. The mixture is thick and will catch and scorch on high heat, which turns the whole thing bitter.
- Judge by texture, not the clockTen minutes is a guide. Stop when a spoon drawn across the pan leaves a track that closes only slowly. If it is loose it will weep on the plate; if it goes past thick to pasty, it will not spread.
- SeasoningNo salt is called for, and reduction concentrates whatever salt the sauce already carries. Season at the end, off the heat; a few drops of Madeira stirred in after cooking restores the wine aroma that the reduction drives off.
- Yield and useSomething under a cup once reduced. It is spooned over or under grilled and sauteed meats, packed into mushroom caps or artichoke bottoms, or used as the bed for eggs and fish gratins.
- KeepingIt refrigerates well for three or four days and reheats gently with a spoonful of stock to loosen it. Cool it quickly before it goes into the refrigerator; a dense hot mass in a covered container holds heat for a long time.
Duxelles is traditionally attributed to a seventeenth-century French cook in the household of the Marquis d'Uxelles, for whom the mushroom preparation is said to be named -- a traditional attribution rather than a documented one. By Oscar Tschirky's day it was standard equipment in a large hotel kitchen, turning up in stuffings, sauces and garnishes. That is why the entry reads as it does. It is written for someone who already has cooked fine herbs and Madeira sauce standing in the larder, and needs only to be told the proportion and how far to reduce them. Recipes of this kind are the connective tissue of the Waldorf book, and they explain how a menu of that size could be produced to order.