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Truffles in Cases
Select a quantity of truffles, all about of the same size, peel them and cook them in white wine and stock, using very little liquid. Truffles should never be cooked too long as they lose their flavor when overdone. When done leave them until cool, and then drain them. Make a pyramid shape out of cardboard or thin wood, fix it securely on fried bread support and brush it over with melted glaze; have in readiness some small paper cases of the same size, one for each truffle. Roll the truffles in melted glaze, and place one in each case. Brush the bottoms of the cases over with melted glaze, and stick one in each pyramid, the largest ones at the base and the smaller ones at the top. Stick three transparent attelette skewers, garnished with truffles, on the top of the pyramid. This piece, being directly dished on the stand, is generally served at ball buffets, where each guest may help himself.
This is less a dish than a buffet showpiece: whole truffles glazed and arranged on a hidden pyramid so guests can pick them off one at a time. Two things carry it — restraint in cooking the truffles, and a meat glaze stiff enough to set.
- Glaze means glace de viande"Melted glaze" here is brown stock reduced until it is syrupy and sets firm and glossy when cold, not a sugar or aspic glaze. It is brushed on warm and left to set; a commercial demi-glace reduced further will do the same job.
- Cook them brieflyThe instruction not to overcook is the hinge: only a few minutes at a bare simmer in a shallow pool of white wine and stock. The recipe leaves the truffles in the pan until cool and drains them afterwards.
- PeelingThe recipe calls for the truffles to be peeled, as was usual in kitchens of this period. Modern practice is to brush them clean and leave the skin on unless it is gritty; peeling costs you a noticeable share of a very expensive ingredient.
- Fresh versus preservedA "quantity of truffles all about the same size" assumed a supply that no longer exists at any sane price. Preserved whole black truffles in tins or jars are already cooked and need only warming through in the wine and stock for a minute or two.
- Attelette skewersOrnamental skewers with decorative tops, used purely for display on cold buffet pieces; the "transparent" ones called for here would have been glass or clear-topped rather than metal. Any small skewer works; they are not meant to be eaten from.
- The pyramid and the socleThe cardboard or wood cone is structural and inedible, mounted on a slab of fried bread for weight and stability. Line it in foil or parchment before glazing so nothing touching food is raw cardboard, and keep the whole assembly cold until it goes out.
- Paper casesSmall fluted paper cases, one per truffle and sized to the truffles as the recipe specifies, so a guest lifts truffle and case together without touching the glaze.
- Yield and serviceCount one truffle per guest and build the cone to suit. It is served cold, standing on the buffet, and does not survive a warm room for long.
Oscar Tschirky was never a cook by trade — he was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel — and this entry shows the part of the job he did know intimately: how food looked on a buffet table. The construction belongs to the tradition of the pièce montée and the socle, the built-up decorative stand generally traced to Carême earlier in the nineteenth century and still standard in grand hotel work in the 1890s, where a cold table was expected to have height and architecture as well as things to eat. Truffles were a luxury, and a hotel of the Waldorf's rank would have been among the establishments able to obtain them. What dates the piece most is the assumption behind the last line: that guests at a ball would help themselves, one truffle each, from a glazed cone, and think nothing remarkable of it.