White Truffles in Winter: A Novel Read online

  “In most kitchens, heat, wine, knives and temperament of the chefs lead to violence. Violence does not sell plates.”

  And even simple things were different. The man who always shouted back the waiter’s orders was not called “the barker,” as he was in other kitchens but “the announcer”—and was forbidden to shout. The staff worked in whispers.

  “Rush hour in the kitchen is not the time for a rush of words. Cooking is the most sacred of the arts and should be approached with the required reverence.”

  At the end of that first day, Escoffier shook the hand of each of his staff members. “Thank you, chef,” he said to everyone, even the dishwasher.

  “It’s a matter of respect,” he told Delphine. “They must all have the desire to replace me someday.” And then he poured her a glass of Moët. He was not a drinker—“Medicinal purposes only,” he said. Nor did he smoke. This pleased her.

  “One last dish,” he said. The sun was now setting. He lit the beeswax tapers, placed them in the silver candelabra, and set it on her table.

  The dish was simple. Six large brown eggs, an ounce of sweet cream butter, and a poêle—“Americans charmingly call this a ‘fraying-pan,’ but since it is not frayed, I have no idea why”—that was the heart of it. Escoffier beat the eggs, but not too much. He then added a bit of salt and pepper and placed the pan on the barest of heat. With one quick movement, he stabbed a peeled garlic clove with the tip of a knife, and held it up as if it were a prize.

  “Madame Escoffier,” he said as if testing the sound of her new name, trying it on.

  He glistened with a thin sheen of sweat—as did she. Her cotton blouse was damp, as were her skirt and stockings. Her long dark hair was thick and unruly. All she really wanted was a bath and a glass of water. And yet, when he said her name, all that was forgotten.

  “Madame Escoffier, come here.”

  Blue flames hummed beneath the poêle. It was so quiet she could hear herself breathe.

  “Delphine Daffis Escoffier,” he said again. “It has such a lovely sound, does it not?”

  Delphine stood at the edge of the chopping block, an arm’s length away. The butter was beginning to melt. He held up the knife topped with the garlic clove. “This is my secret. I tell everyone that the eggs are made in a special silver pan and that is what gives them their perfect taste.”

  “Why not tell them it’s garlic?”

  “Garlic is peasant food. If they knew, it would scandalize.”

  “But it smells like garlic. They believe you?”

  “Of course. I am, after all, Escoffier.”

  “And now I am, too.”

  “Yes,” he said, pleased. “That is delightfully true.”

  And then he kissed her hand, slowly, finger by finger. He never looked away. She felt the heat of him. “Now,” he said softly, “we will stir the butter with our secret and then let the eggs set for a moment and then stir again. Gently.”

  Then he corrected. “Well. You will stir the butter gently. I have cooked all day for you. It is your time to cook for me.”

  Delphine took a step back as if she were about to bolt from the room. “I don’t cook. Not well, at least.”

  “Stir,” he said. It was not a command, but an invitation.

  “I can’t.”

  He shook his head. “You can. I wanted you as my bride from the first moment I saw your eyes—fearless.” He handed her the knife and she took it. She leaned across the chopping block and began to stir but each stroke was awkward—tentative and elliptical. She barely touched the butter at all.

  “That won’t do,” he whispered and took her arm and gently pulled her closer to the pan, then stood directly behind her. “What do you smell?”

  “Butter.”

  “At this point you should only smell cream with a slight edge of garlic. When it smells like butter, it’s beginning to brown. The flavor cannot develop with too much heat. Turn it down. Slow it down. Some things cannot be rushed. Some things need a gentle hand.”

  He then put one hand over hers and held the knife with her. With the other hand, he reached around her thin waist and poured the beaten eggs slowly, a golden ribbon, into the center of the warm butter.

  He was standing so close that she could feel the quickness of his breath. She leaned into the heat of him. “Only a moment in the pan to set and then continue to stir,” he said softly. “The eggs cannot cook too quickly or that will cause lumps to form—this is a thing that should be avoided above all. So again, slow. Slow. Do you understand?”

  She did.

  They stood together like that for a long time—stirring, not speaking, just leaning into each other. There was no need for words.

  When he finally stepped away, he hollowed out two brioches with a quick turn of a knife and then chopped a fist of butter into a fine dice. Delphine continued to stir, not looking at him, still feeling the heat of him, until the eggs were creamy and smooth—and yet, still moist.

  “Finis,” he whispered, pulled back her hair, kissed her neck, and took the pan away from the heat. He sprinkled in the chopped butter, added cream, and with two turns of a spoon he slid the eggs into the brioche cases and then placed them on china plates.

  One taste. One kiss. She was lost.

  The thought of that moment still made her blush.

  Now, fifty-five years later, she must remind Escoffier of that night, and all the rest, when he cooked for her alone, made love to her alone. When he was hers and no one else’s.

  It was, after all, her last chance. She was dying, that much was quite clear. And in all those years, Escoffier had never created a dish for her. Kings, queens, emperors, dukes, duchesses, opera singers, cardinals, diplomats, clowns, hairstyles (the pompadour having at least two), American presidents, actresses (including so many for that Sarah Bernhardt that Delphine had lost count), painters, musicians, a housekeeper, patrons, characters from books, foreign countries, and a girl who sold flowers—even the last voyagers on the Titanic had been graced with a meal especially designed for that momentous and yet ultimately unfortunate journey. But Delphine was forgotten.

  She knew that Escoffier could, with just a bit of cream or a shaving of truffle, allow her to live forever. Not many could remember the great diva Nellie Melba anymore. But when she performed Lohengrin, her soaring operatic voice greatly moved those at Covent Garden, including Escoffier. And so while the details of her performance are forgotten, as is the opera itself, nearly everyone in the world has had a variation on Peach Melba. Perhaps, unlike the original, it was not covered in a lace of spun sugar or served in a silver bowl resting on a block of ice sculpted to look like the wings of the mythical swans that appear in the opera’s first act, but it still contained ripe peaches, vanilla ice cream, and a puree of sugared raspberry, and was most certainly called “Melba.”

  Madame Escoffier had asked him many times for a dish but he always refused.

  “One should never attempt to define the sublime.”

  “You are afraid?”

  “Of course.”

  She didn’t believe it.

  And so Delphine needed to convince Escoffier to create a dish for her. And, although she wasn’t sure how, she would make that kitchen girl, that Sabine, help her.

  SABINE HAD NEVER SEEN A KITCHEN LIKE THE ONE AT La Villa Fernand. It was a nightmare. There was too much of everything everywhere. Forty wooden spoons stuffed into one drawer. Cake and butter molds in the shapes of rabbits, elephants, swans, crosses, trees, stars, moons, countless different variations of Saint Nicholas, several fleur-de-lis, and an assortment of lions and lambs. And there were molds for petit-fours, tarts, madeleine, brioche, tartlett-croustade, dariole-baba, parfait, charlotte, bombe, ice cream loaves, poundcake and terrine à pate. There were larding needles, salamanders, a cocotte and a conical, pyramid-
shaped, of course. And there were so many multiples of potato ricers, mashers and whisks of every size and shape that they tumbled onto the countertop with the slightest provocation. Porcelain dishes and pottery bowls were stacked and stuffed into every available space along with boxes upon boxes of silver serving spoons, plates and bowls that Escoffier had bought at estate auctions for use at his restaurants. And—perfect or chipped, some matched and some not—there seemed to be enough dinnerware to feed several armies, and then some.

  Each pot and pan, each tin, every spoon and plate—was part of the history of Escoffier’s life and it was all gathering dust.

  And to make matters worse, that last August, through some small miracle, tomatoes were abundant. Delphine directed Sabine to gather as many as she could find. “Pick them. Buy them. Steal them. I don’t care,” Delphine said. “We must be awash in tomatoes.”

  And they were. There were tomatoes in various shades and shapes from pink and squat to thin and red as chipped lacquer. They were piled in boxes on the floor, in the hallway, on the back stoop. Pearl or pear-shaped, green-tinged or overripe, they bled onto the white marble countertops where Sabine spent hours peeling, and cursing the eccentrics that she’d come to work for.

  “What will you use them for?”

  “Stories,” Delphine said.

  “Crazy people,” Sabine said under her breath.

  Sabine had only been with the Escoffier family for a week when Delphine’s children had spoken to their mother about their concerns. She could understand their trepidation. Sabine was an insolent girl with wild red hair, willful eyes and a pronounced limp that Delphine decided was the reason that the father had forced the girl into service. He obviously thought that no one would marry such a defective young woman, no matter how beautiful she was—and she was beautiful—and so she would forever be passed from one housekeeping job to the next.

  “My daughter is yours for however long she can be of service to you,” the father said to Delphine. “And in turn, perhaps, Monsieur Escoffier could be so kind as to return a similar favor to me someday. Perhaps he could lend his expertise—and perhaps a bit of money. We could work arm in arm as he did with Monsieur Ritz. I am opening a new resort when the tides turn, have you heard?”

  She had heard. Everyone in Monte Carlo had heard of this fool from Paris. He had no connections in town and knew no one. “When the tides turn”—it was ridiculous. The Great Depression of America had spread to every country in the world, even Monaco. The rich were no longer beautifully rich. They still flitted from New York to Paris to London to Cannes to Hollywood to Monte Carlo to Biarritz to Geneva—and back again. They still drank brandy milk punches for breakfast, martinis before lunch and dinner, and champagne with all meals. They still cheered at the Automobile Club de Monaco’s Grand Prix; bet fortunes on Algerians, French and Americans in Bugattis, Ferraris and anything painted British Racing Green. But no one cared anymore. All talk was of war.

  When the tides turn. The man was a fool. War seeped into every room, every dream.

  Normally, Delphine would have refused such an offer. Forcing a girl into service was against everything that she believed in, and yet she took Sabine into her home. She felt a certain kinship with the girl. After all, Delphine’s own father had also deemed her unsuitable for marriage. But the real truth of the matter was more complicated than that.

  Sabine bore an uncanny resemblance to the actress Sarah Bernhardt.

  “Tell me your name again?”

  Even her voice had that silver tone, like the sound of a flute, for which Sarah was famous. For a moment, Delphine wondered if the morphine had finally taken hold of her brain. She felt anxious, euphoric. Sarah had been dead a long time, thirteen years or more, but there she was. Or at least, appeared to be. And there was that old ache, the jealousy, but oddly enough, there was comfort, too. To see this girl, so much like Sarah in her prime, so alive, it was as if Delphine and Escoffier were young again. And Sarah, of course, was Sarah.

  Delphine could not help but feel an odd tenderness for her.

  Unfortunately, as a cook, the girl was useless. Everything had to be explained over and over again. If Delphine had not been confined to a wheelchair, she would be cooking herself. Her daughter-in-law Rita, Daniel’s widow, and all the nieces could not even properly roast a game hen among them. Germaine, her own daughter, was too intimidated to raise a spoon in any kitchen. And Jeanne, her son Paul’s wife, was only interested in making preserves and pickles, and then only with Escoffier. Besides, they lived in Paris, near Place de l’Étoile, and only visited when Delphine or Escoffier took a turn for the worse.

  And so the house needed a cook, but what they had was Sabine.

  And now the girl was making a disaster of the tomatoes. Delphine was at the end of her patience.

  “You know if you place the tomatoes in hot water, the skin will crack, making them easier to peel. The skin will just slip off.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why aren’t you doing it?”

  “Hot water makes the kitchen hotter.”

  “Peeling them wastes the meat.”

  “A hot kitchen makes me dizzy.”

  Useless.

  Sabine kicked a box of tomatoes with the toe of her boot.

  “How can you cook stories with tomato sauce? It makes no sense.”

  When it came to Sabine, patience was required.

  Delphine wanted to explain that stories engage the heart and mind and palate and make the simplest dish the most lavish of all because a well-told story, true or not, reminds you that, yes, the world is an exotic and magical place, and yes, it can be yours for a price. Enchantment always has a price—and sometimes the cost is love. But Sabine wiped tomato juice from her cheek and said,

  “The children cannot eat stories.”

  It was true, of course. There were so many mouths to feed and so little money. Escoffier was famous, but broke. He’d lost every fortune he’d ever made. His pension was laughable, a dollar a day. The Great War had devastated his vast investment in Russian bonds, his house was mortgaged to the limit and his new book, Ma Cuisine, was not selling at all. But it didn’t matter. All the canned goods, and now the tomatoes, were for him. They were Delphine’s last gift.

  And so what she wanted to say to Sabine was, “The story, and how you tell it, is life itself.”

  But what she said was, “Sabine, it is time to gather Monsieur Escoffier.”

  The sullen cook limped away like an ocean liner in high seas.

  It was some time before Escoffier appeared in the kitchen. His heart was not well; it leaked a bit. His hands were shaking. He sometimes walked with an odd gait, a drag-and-slide movement that was difficult for Delphine to watch.

  “The girl said we were packing tomatoes now?” he said, and made his way across the room. He was dressed as always, ready for company. His black Louis-Philippe dress coat had grown slightly shiny with age; the cravat was faded; his shirt was worn thin, the cuffs frayed.

  Time worries us like a stone, Delphine thought.

  The cook followed closely behind. “Escoffier is here,” Sabine said, as if Delphine could not see her own husband in front of her.

  Just one slap, Delphine thought. “Sabine. The bottles from the wine cellar. Please fetch them.”

  “All of them?”

  Perhaps two slaps.

  “Yes.”

  The girl stormed away. Lurching.

  Delphine felt cruel and reckless. And helpless. Too helpless. There was a line of ants making its way toward the rotting fruit—Slow and sure as vanity.

  “Ants,” Escoffier said as he sat down next to Delphine’s wheelchair. He was horribly winded. The mid-afternoon sun filled the room with heat and light. It made him seem more like a dream than flesh and blood.

  He picked up
a fat black ant and sniffed it. “We should dip these in chocolate.”

  “They’re ants.”

  “They’re black ants. You fold them right into the warm chocolate and it hardens around them and preserves them.”

  “Alive?”

  “Yes. Entombed. They can live about three weeks.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “No. It’s very good. They’re very moist when you bite into them. Sometimes they still have a little fight in them, too.” The ant was large and black, struggling in his hand. “Is there any chocolate in the house? You really only can use black ants, and this size is just right. The red ants are too spicy.”

  The sun was in his eyes. He was squinting to see her. His hands were stained with ink. His skin smelled of acid and sweat.

  “That’s barbaric.”

  “Not at all. Two egg yolks, vanilla, butter—it’s a very civilized recipe.”

  “You are making this up.”

  Outside the kitchen window, the children were playing a raucous game of leap sheep. Delphine could see them. They formed a single line, squatting, child after child. It trailed down the walk. Then one leapt over the back of another and then another and then another—squealing and laughing—and then tumbled onto the ground.

  “You would eat the grandchildren if no one was watching.”

  He looked out the window. “I don’t know how you can say such a thing. After all, they look rather gamey, don’t they?”

  The children were so loud that it took a moment for her to realize that Escoffier was still speaking.

  “Excusez-moi?”

  “I said I have now come to think of the new memoir as an annotated cookbook. My life dish by dish. Every chef around the world will want it. It will be an instant success.”

  A publisher’s daughter, Delphine knew that most chefs had no money. The book that they wrote together, Les Fleurs en Ciré, Flowers in Wax, was beautiful, espousing the elegance of wax floral arrangements, but very expensive to produce. With so many illustrations, including a halftone portrait of Escoffier, and forty photo-engraved drawings, its last reissue sold well but showed little profit. With war on the horizon, this new book, like the others, would not bring in enough to pay even a month’s bills.