White Truffles in Winter: A Novel Read online

  These were the things that Escoffier knew for certain. He reviewed them over and over in his head all evening long. They were unquestionable. Unchanging. They made sense. Xavier’s suicide didn’t. He was a Catholic, after all.

  “Stop thinking,” Sarah said.

  She was lying on top of the long wooden table where they had sat hours earlier. “You’re still thinking about it,” she said. “Stop. Some things never make sense.”

  The studio was filled with candles. Some Escoffier had brought earlier for their luncheon—they were made from beeswax and filled the air with a sweet caramel scent. The rest were Sarah’s. There were exotics such as blood orange oil, frankincense and myrrh. The flowers he had picked—roses, peonies and a spray of lilies—opened into full blossom under the heat of so many flames and joined the heady mix.

  Like dozens of tiny flickering stars, the candles and their scents made the dark night seem even darker, made the cream of her skin seem incandescent. She had washed Xavier’s blood from her feet—there was so much of it that her silk slippers had been ruined. She had washed the smell of food and sweat from her hair and her skin—she had never served a meal before. She had no idea that once she put on the waiter’s black frock coat and striped trousers, how much work it was to serve. The plates were heavy, the wine needed to be poured just so.

  But someone had to serve the meal and Gambetta trusted no one else.

  Once Sarah saw Escoffier’s damaged hands, she insisted that she was the only one who Gambetta would consider an acceptable replacement. “At the very least,” she said, “the Minister will find the substitution an amusing surprise and excuse any misstep that I might make.”

  He did not. Gambetta was so alarmed when Sarah walked into the private room to begin the service that he stormed down into the kitchen in a rage, pulled Escoffier off his feet and was about to strike the small man when the chef raised his shredded hands and said, “The Rothschild.”

  “There was to be secrecy.”

  “Surely your lover can be trusted with her silence.”

  It was an assumption on Escoffier’s part but obviously correct. Gambetta put him down and returned to his table. Of course, there was no choice. Edward VII, the Prince of Wales, Escoffier’s own “Dear Bertie,” Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and young Wilhelm II, the future Kaiser and the Prince of Wales’ cousin, were all seated at Gambetta’s table in the private salon at the top of the stairs. Waiting.

  Wilhelm II, with his withered hand and odd piercing eyes, seemed to Escoffier to be just a frightened boy; he fidgeted in his chair.

  At the sight of the great actress Sarah Bernhardt dressed as a waiter, the men laughed, uncomfortable. Each one was not quite sure how many of the group Sarah had taken for her lover at one time or another, but each assumed that it was more than one. But they were not there to speak of such things.

  The Germans, led by Bismarck, had been trying to isolate the French after the war, but Resistance efforts led by the Catholics plagued them. The Germans were his avowed enemy but Gambetta, always the politician, was more than willing to help them with their Catholic problem, their Kulturkampf, or “culture struggle” as Bismarck was fond of calling it, in exchange for more power. Dear Bertie was more than willing to help broker the deal, in exchange for more power for himself, of course.

  And so, after the first wine was poured, Escoffier saw that they ignored the Divine Miss Sarah completely, and he returned to his kitchen for the evening. There was cantaloupe to start. And then a consommé garnished with gold leaf and the most delicate custard. A fried fillet of sole, in the style of the miller’s wife, rolled in flour, fried and garnished with fish roe. A terrine of boned rack of baby lamb studded with foie gras and truffles. Chicken in aspic. Crayfish soufflé. And sweets, so many sweets. The final menu was daunting.

  Melon Cantalop

  Porto Blanc

  •••

  Consommé Royal

  Paillettes Diablées

  •••

  Fillets de sole aux laitances à la Meunière

  •••

  Selle d’Agneau de Behague poêlée

  Haricots verts à l’Anglaise

  Pommes noisettes à la crème

  •••

  Poularde en gelée

  Salade d’asperges

  •••

  Soufflé d’Ecrevisses Rothschild

  •••

  Biscuit glacé Tortoni

  Gaufrettes Normandes

  •••

  Les Plus Belles Pêches de Montreuil

  Amandes vertes

  •••

  Café Moka à la Française

  Grande Fine Champagne

  Liqueur des Chartreux

  •••

  Vins Choisis: Chablis

  Col d’Éstournel, étampe 1864

  Veuve Clicquot 1874

  The meal took hours to prepare and serve. Several times Escoffier bled through his gauze bandages and was forced to stop and change the dressing. But he considered himself lucky. His palms suffered the most damage and he could easily work around that problem with Sarah providing service.

  For the most part, it went smoothly although Escoffier did not have Sarah present the terrine of baby lamb. That would have been Xavier’s dish, the one he would have created. Escoffier brought it up himself. When he plated young Wilhelm II’s serving, the boy quickly took a bite, and asked for more.

  “Amazing,” he said. “You must send the recipe to our palace chef. It is so German. Royal in nature.”

  The young have no sense of history, he thought.

  It was now nearly midnight. The meal seemed so long ago. Sarah again was naked.

  “You promised me that I would taste moonlight,” she said.

  “Then close your eyes.”

  Her skin smelled like butter. Her hair fell in soft waves off her delicate shoulders; it reminded him of autumn, the copper hills of the countryside. The half-moon scar on her belly was indeed her only imperfection, and yet he could not bear even to kiss her.

  “I have misplaced my heart,” he said.

  “Stop thinking.”

  But he couldn’t. The first time he’d seen Sarah that evening, she was on her knees holding Xavier’s head in her lap like the Virgin with her holy Son, fresh from the cross. The rôtisseur was bleeding onto the floorboards of the meat locker. To Escoffier, it seemed like the loneliest place on earth to die. All around the man, rows and rows of beef had been left to dry on wooden shelves. The locker was filled with them, from top to bottom. The air was cold. It reeked of rotting flesh and mold. The pastry chef Jules, the former nurse from Sarah’s Odéon hospital, stood behind her. He was angry and red-eyed as a spider.

  “A blade to the heart.”

  Jules answered the question that had not been asked. It was clear he blamed Escoffier.

  Sarah made the sign of the cross with cooking oil on Xavier’s head and prayed, “Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit,” and then onto his hands and said, “May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.”

  The Last Rites, Escoffier thought. It was something she obviously learned from the convent or perhaps Odéon.

  “Amen,” Jules said.

  “The police have been sent for, and paid for,” Sarah said. “I arrived to tell you that I was sorry you left this afternoon. You seemed upset. And then this. Jules found him.”

  Escoffier could hear the shuffle of the kitchen brigade overhead. Imagined the men and their red sweating faces; the heat of the coke and coal fires, their own private Hell. I ask so very much of them. He looked at his bleeding hands.

  Jules picked up Xavier’s body from the floor as if it were
one of his flour sacks and carried him out.

  Sarah and Escoffier did not follow. They stood together in the cramped humid locker. She took his bleeding hands into hers, examined them closely.

  “Gambetta?”

  He nodded. “Le Petit Moulin Rouge was all Xavier had left and I threatened to send him away.”

  “Don’t think about it anymore. You were angry.”

  “I never allow anger in my kitchen.”

  Then she did what she had done earlier that day—kissed the tips of his fingers one by one. He pulled away. His blood was on her lips.

  “The Germans,” he said. “They were Gambetta’s honored guests and so they are my honored guests. Besides, Wilhelm is just a boy. He asked for second helpings, like any child would.”

  Escoffier wanted to say, “I had no choice but to welcome them,” but that was not true and they both knew it.

  “Don’t think about it anymore.”

  The world felt small and dangerous, but she kissed his now bandaged hands so gently, he felt himself warm to her.

  “You promised me that I would taste the moon, did you not?” she whispered.

  “And so you shall,” he said, even though he could hear the echo of sorrow in his voice.

  Escoffier slowly folded his dress coat, removed his cravat and rolled up the wine-stained cuffs of his shirt. He washed his hands carefully in cool water and rewrapped them in fresh gauze. When he removed the cork from a tall thin bottle of white truffle oil, the dark deep scent of wet earth grounded the wildly fragrant air.

  Sarah laughed with pleasure. “The scent alone makes me feel as if I am naked in a jungle at night.”

  “The air is warm?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you find you cannot sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  Then drop by drop—so very slowly—Escoffier poured a long thin line of white truffle oil between her breasts and all the way to the mound of her belly. With two fingers, he gently rubbed it into her skin.

  Her breath was quick and uneven. As was his. With a small iridescent spoon, made from the shells of wild rock oysters, Escoffier slowly began to place tiny mounds of caviar, each a perfect circle, along the platter of her bone. Each shimmered with its own light—dark gold to pale amber and then light gray to blue black.

  She was a feast before him. A fallen angel surrounded by stars and perfumed by the heavens. With the mother of pearl spoon he scooped the tiny blue-black eggs from the first pile and placed them gently against her lips.

  “The moon,” he said.

  She did not open her eyes but let the caviar slip onto her tongue. He knew that once the fine skin of it melted, the flavor would be delicate and fleeting. And it was. He could tell by the look of pure pleasure on her face.

  From the darkest beluga to the golden almas, creamy and subtle, to the osetra, with its hint of walnuts and cream, to the small gray eggs of the sevruga, with its overwhelming flavor of the sea, Escoffier fed Sarah a universe of moons. And she, in turn, met each with a kiss that was deeper than the last. But when she finally pulled him down on top of her, he stepped away. Breathing hard.

  “Perfection,” he said, “should not be so easily won.”

  When this evening was later recalled, Escoffier would not speak of Sarah. Nor Xavier. He would, however, speak of the private meal of important men. He would say that the supper, prepared by his own hands, was the beginning of a great friendship between France and England. He would often claim that the famous Entente Cordiale, a series of agreements between the two countries, which became official in 1907, was actually conceived that night at Le Petite Moulin Rouge.

  The details of the evening were never given. All he would say was that Gambetta had requested a private salon for a special dinner for the Prince of Wales, Dear Bertie, and “another important foreign diplomat,” whose name was seemingly forgotten despite the fact that the menu was recounted in great detail.

  “The meal had a serious raison d’être,” Escoffier was fond of saying.

  It was an event that he was particularly proud of despite the fact that a few days after the dinner, on July 13 in the town of Bad Kissingen, a devout Catholic named Eduard Kullmann attempted to assassinate Bismarck. He said he was driven to the act to protect Catholic Law.

  It was rumored that the man was also a devotee of French theater and Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt.

  The Complete Escoffier: A Memoir in Meals

  MOUSSE D’ECREVISSES

  Crayfish Mousse

  You must first select forty rather large and boisterous crayfish. They must be filled with life, able to snap your small finger with ease. If you need to test this, ask an assistant; that is what they are there for.

  Once they are chosen, open a bottle of Moët. Pour it into a bowl. Add the crayfish. Stand back. They will put up a fight but rest assured that this is a merciful death, one that you would wish upon yourself.

  History has recorded that I first served the dish to the Emperor of Germany Wilhelm II. The meal was presented on June 18, 1906, on the Amerika, a luxury liner. We will leave it at that. Discretion is an important virtue in a sophisticated world.

  After you have removed the crayfish from the bowl, cook them quickly in a traditional mirepoix. This should be a fine dice—not to be confused with a mince for if this mixture is minced, then this would be a matignon and not a mirepoix and would result in an entirely different dish altogether. The mirepoix should consist of two carrots, two onions, two stalks of celery taken from the heart, one tablespoon of salt pork cut paysanne-style (for American chefs, this would mean that the pork should be 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch by 1/8 inch exactly), a sprig of thyme and a half bay leaf crumbled. Simple.

  Moisten the cooked crayfish in a half-bottle of Moët. What you do with the other half of the bottle will depend on if there are any young ladies present.

  Shell. Trim. Cool. Pound the shells together with three ounces of red butter (Variation 142 in Le Guide Culinaire), one-quarter pint of cold fish velouté (make sure that this sauce has been simmered with the blandest fish possible, as it is to merely provide a back note that says “fish” and not the entire orchestra of King Neptune) and six tablespoons of melted fish jelly. (This should be made with the finest Persian caviar and a dry white champagne of unquestionable quality, such as the Moët, but do not use the same Moët that you have used to take the life of the crayfish, as their tears add too much salt.) Strain. Rub through a fine sieve. Set in ice.

  Now add cream. When one cooks for the Royals, there must always be cream. They demand it. I believe it is because they have no idea how inexpensive it is. Pour a pint of thick cream into a bowl and whip. It is important that when whipping your mind is calm. If you are angry or afraid, you will whip the cream into butter and that is not desirable.

  Perhaps this is why people today no longer care for good food. They are worried that the Germans will come again. But they should not be distracted by politics. Food is not political.

  I knew the Emperor as a young man. Prince Edward, his cousin, frequently brought him to Le Petit Moulin Rouge for courir les filles, chasing of girls, which he took little interest in. I think it was because of his arm. It was withered. No one was allowed to touch him. And no one did. He was said to have a violent temper, but it was not my place to notice.

  However, I can tell you that I know personally that Emperor Wilhelm II spoke highly of and respected his grandmother Queen Victoria—his mother was her daughter after all—although, after a time, he did not like Prince Edward and his wanton ways. He eventually came to call him “Satan.”

  Unfortunately when Royals bicker, people die.

  It is interesting to note that when I placed this dish, Mousse d’ Ecrevisses, on the menu of the Amerika, the Emperor’s translator was confused by the word �
�mousse.” He looked it up in a French dictionary and came to the mistaken belief that it meant “young sailor” and asked if I truly believed that the German people could be cannibals.

  People should not ask questions that they do not wish to know the answer to.

  And so I said, “Would not a very young sailor be more appetizing than that old Bavarian cream that has been on your menus for the last two centuries?”

  I would like to think that they all laughed, but I’m not sure that they did.

  At 7 p.m. when dinner was served one of the officers told this story to the Emperor and said, “Your Majesty brought Escoffier here especially from London. Did you know that he was a prisoner during the Franco-Prussian War and might well decide to poison us?”

  Of course, I reassured them. “You may dine in peace. If, one day, your country once again seeks war with France, and I am still able, I will do my duty. But for the time being, you may relax and not let anything trouble your digestion!”

  And then His Majesty and I shook hands, as gentlemen do.

  You may ask how I remember the exact thing that I said all those many years ago. A memoir is reminiscence. This is how I remember the moment and the greatness of a man is always defined by how he sees his own life. Truth is not a consideration. In fact, it is often not welcome. What one looks for is a sense of the profound. Can the teller of the tale understand the meaning of his own life? Can he grasp his place in history?

  It does not matter if the story is true or not. What fool calls for truth in a memoir? Nothing is more uninteresting. The only truth you need to know is that this is what I would have wanted to say at that time and that should tell you who I am. I would have wanted him to come into my kitchen to say he was sorry for my suffering; sorry that I was not treated well as his grandfather’s prisoner of war. I would have wanted to say, “All I saw around me was the inhuman consequences of fratricidal wars. We can be German, French, English or Italian—but why make war? When one thinks of the crimes that are committed, of the widows, of the orphans, of the crippled and the maimed, of the poor women abused by invading forces, one cannot help but tremble with indignation.”