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Milanese Garnish
This is composed of truffles, mushrooms, beef tongue, rice and cheese, cooked as follows with Madeira and tomato sauces: Cut two truffles, six mushrooms, and an equal quantity of cooked smoked tongue into pieces; put them into a saucepan with two breakfast cupfuls of boiled rice, a half pint of each of tomato and Madeira sauces, one tablespoonful of salt, a little pepper, and three tablespoonfuls of grated cheese (either Parmesan or Gruyere). Cook for ten minutes before using.
A classical French garnish in the Waldorf's house style: a savory rice bound with two brown-ish sauces and studded with tongue, mushroom and truffle, meant to be spooned alongside a cutlet or chicken rather than served on its own.
- SaltA full tablespoon of salt is far too much here. Smoked tongue, grated Parmesan and two reduced sauces are all salty already; add a pinch at the end and taste instead.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup runs larger than a teacup, roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Two cupfuls of boiled rice works out to somewhere in the region of two-thirds to one cup of raw rice before boiling.
- Half pintOne cup each of tomato sauce and Madeira sauce, so two cups of liquid to two cups of rice. That is generous; hold some back if you want the garnish to hold its shape on the plate.
- Madeira sauceNot simply wine. It is a demi-glace or reduced brown veal stock finished with Madeira. A good jarred demi-glace loosened with a splash of dry Madeira and reduced a few minutes will do the job.
- The ten minutesThis is a marrying step, not cooking. Keep it at a bare simmer and fold rather than stir, or already-boiled rice breaks down into porridge. If it looks tight before ten minutes are up, stop.
- Cooked smoked tongueWhole smoked beef tongue is a butcher order now. Sliced pickled or smoked tongue from a deli counter works; failing that, a good smoked ham or cured beef gives the same salt-and-smoke note, though the texture is drier.
- TrufflesTwo black truffles was an ordinary hotel expense in 1896 and is not one now. A small jar of preserved truffle peelings, added off the heat with a spoonful of their liquid, gets closer than truffle oil does.
- CheeseParmesan or Gruyère, grated fine and added at the end so it melts into the sauce rather than stringing. Three tablespoons is a seasoning amount, not a binder.
- YieldRoughly four cups of finished garnish, enough to spoon alongside a number of plates.
A la milanaise in nineteenth-century French kitchens meant a specific set of things: a julienne of tongue, mushroom and truffle, tomato in the sauce, and cheese somewhere in the dish. It was usually built on macaroni; the use of boiled rice here makes it a spooning garnish for cutlets and roast birds instead. The book is a working record of the Waldorf's kitchen under Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maitre d'hotel who ran the dining rooms rather than the stoves, and entries like this one are less recipes for a household than components a professional brigade kept ready. The two sauces called for, tomato and Madeira, are the sort of standing preparations a hotel kitchen of the period would have had to hand, which is why a garnish this elaborate could be described in five lines.