No. 517

Perigueux Sauce

Sauce Perigueux

Peel three ounces of fresh truffles; cook them with some salt and Madeira wine; remove them from the fire and keep them in a covered vessel. Infuse in two gills of boiling Madeira wine, one ounce of raw ham cut into dices, the truffle peelings, some thyme, bay leaf, and sprigs of parsley. Put on the fire to reduce, one pint of espagnole (No. 414), stir slowly into it, one gill of veal blond (No. 423), and the same quantity of Madeira infusion. When the sauce is succulent and sufficiently consistent, strain it, and set it into a saucepan with a few spoonfuls of the cooked truffles cut into eighth of an inch squares.

Another way is to infuse in two gills of Madeira wine, one ounce of truffle peelings with a little thyme and bay leaf, leaving them in for thirty minutes. Pour into a saucepan a pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414) with essence of ham (No. 390), a little mignonette, and two gills of chicken or game stock (No. 195), then reduce and strain the sauce through a tammy (No. 159). Place in another saucepan two ounces of truffles cut in small one-eighth inch squares with two gills of Madeira wine, reduce it until dry, and incorporate into the sauce just when ready to serve one ounce of fresh butter.

← No. 516 Perigord Sauce Hot Sauces No. 518 Pickle Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic truffle-and-Madeira derivative of espagnole from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, written for a kitchen that already had brown sauce and stocks standing by. Two versions are given; the second is the simpler one.

The hinge: the base sauceEverything depends on the espagnole (No. 414), a brown roux-based sauce simmered with mirepoix and brown stock for hours. Without it there is no recipe. A well-reduced modern demi-glace is the practical stand-in; a thin gravy will not carry the truffle.
MeasuresA gill is half a cup, so two gills is 1 cup and a pint is 2 cups. Ounces of truffle and ham are by weight.
Truffle peelingsThe recipe assumes you are peeling fresh truffles and have trimmings to spare for the infusion. If you are working from a small jarred or frozen truffle, use a little of the truffle itself plus the juices in the tin rather than trying to generate peel.
Veal blond and essence of hamVeal blond (No. 423) is a pale veal stock, not browned; essence of ham (No. 390) is a heavily reduced ham stock. A reduced light veal stock covers the first; for the second, a small amount of finely diced raw prosciutto or country ham simmered in the sauce and strained out gives the same effect.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked pepper, usually white, added with the sauce and stock during the reduction and strained out with the other aromatics. Not a floral reference.
TammyA tammy (No. 159) is a fine worsted straining cloth, twisted between two people to force sauce through. A fine chinois or a sieve lined with damp muslin does the same work.
MadeiraUse a dry to medium Madeira such as Sercial or Verdelho. Sweet Malmsey will read as sugary once the sauce is reduced.
Butter at the endThe recipe adds the final ounce of butter only when the sauce is ready to serve; the usual practice is to swirl it in off the heat and avoid boiling the sauce afterwards, which would separate the butter out.
YieldRoughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups after reduction, depending on how far it is taken; served as a spooned sauce with beef fillet, tournedos, poached eggs or game.

A Little History

The name points to Périgueux, the chief town of Périgord in southwestern France, the great truffle country of the Dordogne, and by the nineteenth century "à la périgueux" on a French menu simply signalled black truffle in a Madeira-scented brown sauce. It was one of the standard small sauces derived from espagnole in the classic repertoire; how it was distinguished from the Perigord Sauce immediately preceding it in this book varied from one author to another. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 with the numbered cross-references you see here, so that a brigade could build a sauce like this from components already prepared elsewhere in the kitchen; the truffles themselves were imported and expensive.