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Sauce Demi-Deuil
Heat in a saucepan one and a half tablespoons butter, adding two tablespoons flour, and mix while heating for one minute; then strain through a cheesecloth a pint of the turkey broth into this pan, mix well until it comes to a boil, then let reduce to half the quantity. Add three-quarters gill cream, mix well and strain through a cheesecloth into another saucepan. Cut into julienne strips one small truffle and one ounce cooked, smoked beef tongue and add to the sauce with two tablespoons sherry; lightly mix and let boil for five minutes, remove and serve as required.
A small velouté built on turkey broth, finished with cream and garnished with julienne of truffle and tongue. The quantities are tiny — this is a sauce for one platter, not a batch.
- Three-quarters gillA gill is half a cup, so three-quarters of a gill is 6 tablespoons of cream. Heavy cream is the right choice; it will not break when the sauce returns to a boil.
- Reduce, then measureA pint of broth reduced by half leaves a cup of sauce thickened by 1½ tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour — a firm coating consistency once the cream goes in. If it tightens past that, loosen with more broth rather than water.
- Strain the broth firstThe cheesecloth straining before the broth hits the roux is not fussiness. Turkey broth carries fat and fine sediment that will speckle a pale sauce, and the second straining after the cream is what makes it smooth enough to show off the julienne.
- TruffleA black truffle is what is meant, fresh or preserved; bottled truffle works and its liquid can go into the sauce. Truffle oil does not, since the point is the black strips against the cream.
- Smoked beef tongueCooked, smoked tongue was a common larder item in this period and is still sold at delicatessens, smoked or pickled. An ounce is a slice or two; cut it in matchsticks no thicker than the truffle so the two read as a pair.
- The sherryTwo tablespoons boiled five minutes takes the raw edge off the alcohol and leaves the nuttiness. Use a dry amontillado or fino rather than a sweet cream sherry, which will make the sauce cloying against turkey.
- YieldA cup and a quarter or so — sauce for four portions of poached poultry, sweetbreads or turkey breast. Hold it off direct heat in a warm bain-marie; a skin forms fast on so small a quantity.
Demi-deuil means "half-mourning," the stage of nineteenth-century French mourning dress in which black was relieved by grey and white, and in the kitchen the name was attached to any dish where black truffle was set against something pale. The best-known example is the Lyonnais poulet demi-deuil, a poached hen with truffle slices slipped under the skin, a dish generally credited to the mères of Lyon and made famous by Eugénie Brazier's restaurant. Here the same conceit is scaled down to a sauce: black truffle and dark smoked tongue in a cream-pale velouté, built on turkey broth rather than veal — truffle being expensive but needed only by the ounce when it is cut in threads.