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Truffles Cooked in Champagne
Wash well and clean one-half pound of truffles, place in a saucepan, sprinkle over salt and pepper to taste, as well as a small quantity of grated nutmeg, moisten with champagne, and a little blonde veau or veal stock, and boil until tender. Remove the truffles when done, and turn them on a dish; strain the liquor into another saucepan, reduce it to one-half its quantity, pour it over the truffles, and serve.
A short luxury course from the Waldorf's kitchen, written for cooks who had whole fresh truffles and homemade veal stock on hand. Almost everything that needs explaining here is a matter of sourcing.
- What "truffles" means hereFresh winter black truffles, almost certainly Tuber melanosporum from Périgord, sold whole and dirty. Jarred summer truffles, truffle paste and truffle oil are not substitutes for a dish where the truffle is the only solid ingredient.
- Half a pound is a lotAt current prices half a pound of fresh black truffle is a serious outlay. The recipe gives no yield, but half a pound would stretch to perhaps four servings. Scaling down to two or three ounces works, but reduce the liquid to match or the sauce will need a long reduction.
- Blonde veauFond de veau blond: a light veal stock, the bones and trimmings coloured only pale gold rather than roasted dark. A good unsalted veal or light chicken stock stands in; a dark demi-glace will bury the truffle.
- How much champagne"Moisten" is not a quantity. Enough to come roughly halfway up the truffles is the sense of it, with the veal stock only "a little", as the recipe says, rather than an equal measure. A dry non-vintage brut is right; the sweetness of a demi-sec will show in the reduction.
- CleaningBrush the truffles under cold running water to get the grit out of the crevices, then pat dry. Do not peel them; the skin holds much of the aroma and, in this dish, it also holds the truffle together.
- "Boil until tender"Barely simmer, covered, rather than boil. Whole medium truffles take about 20 to 30 minutes to lose their raw crunch. A hard boil drives off the volatile aroma you are paying for, and the earlier you can pull them the better.
- Season at the endSalt and pepper go in at the start here, but the liquid is then reduced by half. Season the truffles lightly, and correct the sauce only after reduction.
- ServingA small course on its own, hot, with bread to take up the sauce; or sliced over an omelette or plain risotto. Whisking a knob of cold butter into the reduced liquor off the heat gives it body without altering the flavour.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, presided over a house that worked in the French repertoire of the late nineteenth century, where truffles were rarely allowed to stand alone — they were sliced into forcemeats, studded under the skin of poultry, or cut into decorative shapes for garnish. Cooking them whole in wine is related to the Périgord habit of wrapping a truffle in fat and burying it in the embers (truffe sous la cendre) and to the various truffes au champagne that appear on grand-hotel menus of the 1890s and 1900s. Champagne here is doing double duty: it is an acid, aromatic cooking liquid, and it is a statement about the dining room. The fresh French truffle trade of that era is generally reckoned to have been far larger than today's — harvests are often said to have been counted in hundreds of tons before the First World War, which is usually credited with disrupting the oak groves and the rural labour that tended them — which is why a book like this can call for half a pound of them in a single dish without comment.