No. 2723

Cepes, Provencal Style

Cepes a la Provencale

Wash and wipe some cepes heads after suppressing the stalks; split them in two through their thickness and fry in oil over a brisk fire, with some chopped onions, a clove of garlic and bay leaf, seasoning with salt and pepper. When their moisture has been reduced add a little reduced espagnole sauce (No. 414) and tomato sauce (No. 549); boil up once or twice and finish with chopped parsley and lemon juice. Take out the garlic and bayleaf, dish them up and surround with croutons of bread (No. 51), fried in oil.

← No. 2722 Celeriac Mirabeau or a la Villeroi Mushrooms & Truffles No. 2724 Cepes Baked with Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

A short, high-heat sauté that depends almost entirely on driving the water out of the mushrooms before any sauce goes near them. The two referenced sauces are the only real obstacle to cooking this today.

The hinge: reduce the moisture firstCèpes hold a great deal of water, and if the sauce goes in while they are still weeping you get grey stewed mushrooms in a thin gravy. Keep the pan hot and uncrowded until the liquid has gone and the cut faces have colored, then add the sauces.
Cèpes and substitutesCèpes are Boletus edulis, sold as porcini. Fresh ones are seasonal and expensive; 1 to 1.5 lb of fresh mushrooms will serve four as a side. Dried porcini, soaked and squeezed dry, work but need less time in the pan since much of their moisture is already gone. Buy from a reliable source rather than foraging on the strength of a picture.
Stalks"Suppressing the stalks" means removing them. The recipe does not say what becomes of them; cepe stems are good eating unless woody, so trim the base and dice them to cook alongside, or save them for stock.
Espagnole, No. 414A brown sauce built on brown roux and veal stock, then reduced. A professional kitchen of this period kept it standing by; a modern cook can substitute a couple of tablespoons of well-reduced veal or beef stock, or a demi-glace concentrate, per pound of mushrooms. It is meant to bind and gloss, not to flood the dish -- the recipe asks only for "a little".
Tomato sauce, No. 549Tomato sauces in books of this kind are typically stock-based and sieved rather than a herbed pasta sauce, though the cross-referenced recipe is not reproduced here. Plain passata reduced a little is closer than anything jarred with basil and oregano.
Garlic and bay are flavoring, not ingredientsOne whole clove and one leaf, both fished out before serving. Slicing or crushing the garlic defeats the intent, which is a background note rather than a garlic dish.
Oil and croutonsThe recipe specifies only "oil", for both the pan and the bread; olive oil is the likely reading given the Provencal name. Fry the croutons separately in clean oil and add them at the last moment, or they soften.
FinishingThe recipe adds parsley and lemon juice after the brief boil, as a finish; keeping them off the heat preserves the sharp lift against the reduced brown sauce.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) was written from the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and its regional French labels are shorthand for a set of flavors rather than for a particular village dish: a la provencale in this vocabulary means olive oil, garlic and tomato, as against butter and cream further north. Cepes were a prestige wild mushroom in French cooking, and Ranhofer gives them a run of recipes in the mushroom and truffle section; how they reached New York -- fresh in season, dried, or otherwise preserved -- the page does not say. The structure of the recipe is characteristic of the period's grande cuisine: even a simple saute of mushrooms is finished with two sauce derivatives held ready elsewhere in the kitchen, which is why the numbered cross-references matter as much as the ingredient list.