No. 385

Duxelle, or Cooked Fine Herbs

Duxelle ou Fines Herbes Cuites

Put four ounces of scraped fat pork and butter into a saucepan, and when well melted add to it six ounces of either chopped or one-eighth of inch pieces of shallot, a clove of crushed and chopped garlic, let these ingredients fry without coloring, adding half a pound of raw, finely chopped mushrooms; set it on the fire, and reduce while stirring continuously until the moisture from the mushrooms be entirely evaporated, then add an ounce of chopped parsley washed and pressed out; an ounce of chopped truffles may be added, but this is optional. If it needs to be thickened add to it half a pint of demi-glaze sauce (No. 413), and reduce until it acquires a consistency.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's duxelles is a working larder preparation rather than a dish: a dark, dry mushroom paste held in the cold room and spooned into stuffings, sauces and gratins all week. Everything depends on driving off the mushroom water.

The hinge: cook it dryKeep the pan wide and the heat moderate-to-high and stir until the mixture stops steaming and begins to sizzle in fat again. Duxelles that still holds moisture will weep into whatever it is stuffed and sours within a day or two.
"Scraped fat pork"Fresh pork fatback or unsmoked salt pork, scraped to a paste against the grain. Salt pork should be blanched first or the finished duxelles will be aggressively salty once reduced. Unsmoked bacon fat or plain butter both work; the pork is there for body and keeping quality.
An ambiguous measure"Four ounces of scraped fat pork and butter" does not say whether that is four ounces total or four of each. Four ounces combined — roughly two of each — is ample for the quantities given here.
Six ounces of shallotThat is around five or six large shallots to eight ounces of mushrooms, a far higher ratio than most modern duxelles. It is deliberate, and it is why this version reads as a savoury base rather than a pure mushroom paste. Halve it if you want the mushrooms forward.
MushroomsThe recipe says only 'mushrooms'; Ranhofer most likely meant the cultivated sort of his day, which ran cream to brown rather than the white button of today. Stems are fine and welcome here. Chop by hand or pulse briefly — a food processor run too long turns them to slurry that takes twice as long to dry out.
Demi-glaceHis No. 413 is a reduced brown sauce built on espagnole and stock. Half a pint is a cup. It is optional: without it you have a dry duxelles for stuffings and Duxelles-crusted meat, with it a spreadable, saucier version for gratins and filled vegetables.
TrufflesAn ounce of chopped truffle, which The Epicurean calls for freely elsewhere, is a considerable expense now. A spoonful of truffle peelings, or nothing at all, changes the preparation less than the price suggests.
Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield; expect roughly a cup and a half without the sauce. Refrigerated under a film of fat it should keep for several days, and it freezes well in tablespoon portions, which is the most useful way to keep it.

A Little History

Duxelles is generally traced to the seventeenth-century cook François Pierre de La Varenne, who is said to have named it for his employer, the Marquis d'Uxelles — a traditional attribution rather than a documented one, since La Varenne's own books do not use the word. By the time Charles Ranhofer set down The Epicurean in 1894 after three decades at Delmonico's in New York, it had long since become plumbing: one of the numbered auxiliaries a large brigade made in quantity each morning and drew on all service. That is why it sits in this chapter alongside the stocks and essences rather than among the finished dishes, and why the entry is written as a ratio to be scaled rather than a recipe with a yield. The pork fat in the base is the older, more frugal form; kitchens are often said to have dropped it later for butter alone, but it gave the mixture keeping power in a cold room that was cold only by ice.