No. 2843

Truffles in a Napkin or in a Croustade

Truffes en Serviette ou en Croustade

Choose one pound of the finest medium-sized, round and well-marbled truffles; clean and brush over; wrap each one separately in a thin slice of fresh pork. Fry slowly in butter without coloring one ounce of raw lean ham, cut from the kernel and the sinews removed, as much carrot and the same of onions, all three to be cut in eighth of an inch pieces, one bay leaf, thyme, a small slice of garlic and one clove. When these ingredients have been fried colorless moisten with a quarter of a bottleful of champagne or white wine and let boil, then skim and simmer for twenty minutes. Add the truffles and cook slowly for ten minutes; thicken the stock very slightly with a bit of kneaded butter (No. 579) and close the saucepan hermetically; set it in a bain-marie for half an hour. Dress the truffles in a folded napkin (Fig. 557). Butter the sauce, pass it through a tammy and serve it in a sauce-boat the same time as the truffles. These can also be dressed in a basket made of border paste (No. 131), decorated with fanciful cuts made of the same paste, or even one made of carved bread. In either case have the basket very tasteful and elegant and spread out open on the top.

← No. 2842 Tomatoes Stuffed with Fresh Mushrooms Mushrooms & Truffles No. 2844 Truffles in Shells, Baked →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is cooking whole fresh black truffles in a wine-and-aromatic braise, then holding them in their own steam. Almost everything here depends on the truffles themselves being worth the trouble.

The hinge: fresh winter truffles onlyThis works only with fresh Tuber melanosporum (or a comparable winter black truffle), firm and marbled through when cut. Summer truffles, jarred truffles and truffle oil have neither the aroma nor the structure to survive forty minutes of gentle cooking, and the dish is nothing but its perfume.
"A thin slice of fresh pork"Almost certainly unsmoked, unsalted fresh pork fat cut into a sheet — a barde. Each truffle is wrapped so the fat bastes it and seals the aroma in. Thinly sliced fresh fatback is the substitute; bacon or pancetta will smoke and salt over the truffle entirely.
Ham "cut from the kernel"The noix, the solid muscle of the ham, trimmed of gristle. One ounce of raw lean unsmoked ham, diced small, as the recipe specifies — it is seasoning for the braise, not an ingredient you will taste on its own.
A quarter of a bottlefulAbout 6 fl oz, or three-quarters of a cup, of dry champagne or a dry white wine. The mirepoix is fried without color first so the finished sauce stays pale and clean-tasting.
Kneaded butterRanhofer's No. 579 is beurre manié: soft butter worked with flour to a smooth paste (proportions vary, roughly equal weights being usual), whisked in a pinch at a time. "Very slightly" is the operative phrase — the sauce should barely coat, not bind.
Hermetically closed, then the bain-marieA tight lid and a water bath at a bare simmer, well under boiling, for half an hour. The cooking continues, but very gently; the point is largely to infuse and to keep the volatile aroma in the pan rather than in the kitchen.
Pass it through a tammyA tammy cloth strains and pushes the sauce smooth. A fine chinois with a ladle, or a fine sieve lined with muslin, does the same. "Butter the sauce" means mounting it off the heat with cold butter — do not let it boil after that or it will split.
Service in the napkinThe folded napkin is not decoration alone: it holds heat and traps the aroma released when it is opened at the table. Warm the napkin and the serving dish first, and open it in front of the guests.
YieldA pound of medium truffles is roughly eight to twelve pieces, enough for six to eight people as a course on its own.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some thirty years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the restaurant working with French truffles in the winter months. Truffes en serviette was a set piece of grand nineteenth-century service: the truffles are cooked whole, wrapped in fat and closed under a lid so that nothing escapes, then presented in a folded linen napkin whose purpose is to keep the perfume until the moment the diner sees it. The alternative he offers — a croustade of border paste or carved bread, "very tasteful and elegant" — belongs to the same ornamental tradition, in which a support of barely edible paste or carved bread was shaped for the table. That a full pound of truffles is treated as a course in its own right, sauced only with its own braising liquid, is a fair measure of what the Delmonico's dining room was expected to bear.