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Perigueux Sauce
Peel and chop four truffles, put them into a stewpan with one wineglassful of sherry and boil for a minute; then pour in one pint of half-glaze, add a little salt and a teaspoonful of sugar. Stir the sauce over the fire till boiling, then serve it. (2) Put into a saucepan one and one-half pints of thin Spanish sauce, one-half pint each of essence of mushrooms and essence of truffles. Boil the sauce till thickly reduced, then strain it through a fine hair-sieve, mix with it about two tablespoonfuls of chopped truffles that have been cooked in a little Madeira, and serve.
Two versions of the same classic brown truffle sauce, written for a brigade that already had stock pots going. Everything hinges on the base: without a real demi-glace this is just sherry-flavoured gravy.
- Half-glaze and Spanish sauce"Half-glaze" is demi-glace, and "Spanish sauce" is sauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce that demi-glace is made from. The first version starts with the finished demi-glace; the second builds it by reducing thin espagnole with the essences. Good jarred demi-glace or a heavily reduced veal stock will stand in.
- A wineglassfulIn American cookbooks of this period a wineglass is about 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup. Use a dry amontillado or oloroso rather than cream sherry, since the recipe already adds a teaspoon of sugar.
- Essence of mushrooms and trufflesThese were house preparations: mushroom or truffle trimmings simmered in stock or Madeira and strained. Mushroom essence can be approximated with strongly reduced mushroom stock; truffle essence is sold bottled, and the canned-truffle soaking liquid is much the same thing in miniature. Most commercial truffle oil is flavoured with a synthetic aroma compound rather than with truffle, and behaves differently, so use it sparingly if at all.
- Four trufflesUnspecified size; by the 1890s these would most often have been black Perigord truffles sold in tins. Weight varies widely, so judge by weight rather than count. At current prices you may prefer to scale the sauce down or use a preserved truffle with its juices.
- Hair sieveA fine horsehair sieve; a chinois lined with muslin does the same job. Strain before the final chopped truffles go in, not after.
- Do not boil after the truffles go inThe chopped truffle at the end is there for aroma, which is volatile. Warm it through in the finished sauce off a hard boil and serve promptly rather than holding it.
- The sugarA teaspoon in a pint is seasoning, not sweetening. It rounds off the acidity of the sherry and the tomato in the espagnole. Taste before adding it if your base is already mellow.
- Yield and servingVersion one makes about a pint, enough for eight to ten portions of tournedos, filet, or poached eggs.
Sauce Perigueux takes its name from Perigueux, the town in the Dordogne at the centre of the French black truffle trade, and by the late nineteenth century the name generally signalled that a dish contained truffle. Its near relation, sauce Perigourdine, is usually distinguished by using truffle slices or whole truffle rather than chopped. Oscar Tschirky was not a chef but the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel, and this entry reads as a kitchen method rather than a home cook's: it assumes a stock pot of espagnole, essences drawn from trimmings, and a supply of tinned truffles, the sort of provisioning a New York luxury hotel of the 1890s would have had. The two variants side by side are essentially a shortcut and a from-scratch version of the same sauce.