White Truffles in Winter: A Novel

by N. M. Kelby

  The warmth of the sun shining through the window made him sleepy but there was still so much work to do.

  It is, after all, a terrible thing to be forgotten; he had never thought of it that way before.

  A wire basket of eggs awaited: some were green, some the palest of pink. Some were speckled brown and others, blue and green. There were a few tiny gull eggs, a smattering of quail and two fat duck eggs. The farmer gave every egg he had to Bobo for Escoffier. Each one was beautiful in its own right.

  Escoffier chose six of the brown. He’d not cooked by himself for years. The shells were tougher than he remembered. He had to tap them with a knife several times before they cracked; yolks broke, bits of shell fell into the bowl. He beat them gently and placed a clove of garlic on the end of the knife, a knob of butter in the pôele and closed his eyes.

  The smell of sweet cream. The edge of garlic. His leaking heart.

  At sunset, Bobo and Sabine arrived at the house with the rest of the food on Escoffier’s list. They managed to get nearly everything including Russian caviar and angry lobsters but the Grand Hôtel could no longer get foie gras. There was talk of rationing; plans were already being drawn up.

  Escoffier had changed into his chef’s whites and was seated at the kitchen table surrounded by colored inks, a drawing pad, and dozens of old menus. He wore a single medal, the Rosette of an Officer of the Legion, which had been conferred upon him in 1928. Surprisingly Wilhelm II, the former Emperor, King and Commander-in-Chief, was there at the ceremony and said a few words.

  “Of course, I came,” he told him later. “We’re friends after all, aren’t we?”

  After all.

  After war, after Daniel, after it all—there he was. Queen Victoria’s grandson. The war broke him. Germany had abandoned him. Escoffier had heard that he’d been living in exile in Holland, longing for English tea. And that he’d become afraid of barbers. That looked to be true. His hair had turned white and hung down his back. Untrimmed, his mustache grew wild around his lips.

  He’d renounced the war. “It was nothing that I ever wanted,” he told anyone who listened but few did. It was not just that he had been the enemy, but accusations of homosexuality had made him an outcast.

  “Have you forgotten me, old friend?”

  He had. The last time Escoffier even thought of Wilhelm was the night he retuned home to La Villa Fernand after his voyage on the RMS Berengaria. That was the last night Madame Escoffier had been well; the last night she had actually cooked for him with her own hands.

  “We are friends after all,” Escoffier reassured him. And the battered man kissed him as a brother would. Embraced him, weeping.

  To be forgotten is the saddest thing. The Rosette of an Officer of the Legion now served as a reminder of that.

  “Where do we begin?” Bobo asked.

  “Bones,” Escoffier said. “They hold memory in their marrow; they are the essence of a life lived.”

  “And so we begin with stock?”

  “Sabine, the small Canton bowls, please. One ladle. Then taste. Truly taste it. In silence. In reverence. Then ask yourself what you are tasting. And then add another ladle, this time with thin slices of truffle, enough to cover the top. Using too little truffle is wasteful. You need an opulent amount for full impact. Let the heat from the soup warm it. Then again, taste it. In silence.”

  The old man handed Bobo a recipe. “Oeufs Brouillés à la Bohémienne, Bohemian Scrambled Eggs. It has truffles and is served in a brioche. Lovely.”

  “For Madame?”

  “Non. For Bobo, our ‘Bohémiene.’ ”

  “And for Madame?” Sabine asked.

  Escoffier put his arm around Bobo. “Do you know how to make an aligot?”

  “I know of it, of course. I’ve never made one. Potatoes and cheese. Whipped for a very long time. Very simple.”

  “It only seems simple. Make it for Sabine. Madame Escoffier would like that.”

  Escoffier put his arm around Sabine, too, and held them both for a moment. They could feel his thin bones rattle with each breath.

  “And the dish for Madame?” Sabine asked.

  He walked away without another word.

  “He just needs some sleep,” she said.

  “Or help. What would it hurt if we made a menu and said it was his? Who would know?”

  Sabine unpacked the baskets. “Champagne. Caviar. Eggs. Lobster. Tarragon. Crème fraîche. White truffles. Peas and pigeons.”

  “The makings of a romantic meal.”

  “What of the aligot? There is cheese and potatoes.”

  “Bourgeois. This is the wife of Escoffier.”

  Sabine put the veal stock in the Windsor pan to heat. When it was ready, she measured one ladle of stock into each blue bowl. They sat in the stark kitchen, in silence, in reverence. One spoon after the other—the stock was dark, primal. Roasting the bones added a surprising richness and depth. “You were right,” he said. “But then you knew that.”

  She took the white truffle from the basket. “Let’s not,” he said. “We’ll save it for tomorrow. Papa can join us.”

  “Then this,” she said and picked up the two lobsters and set them on the table near the bowl. They smelled of the ocean. “Now close your eyes and taste again.”

  The stock was scented with lobster, as if the creatures were already part of the meal.

  “Clever girl.”

  “Lobster, crème fraîche, tarragon and shallot?”

  “Lobster with tarragon cream?”

  “And veal stock. The preparation? Not boiled, too common. Broiled dries.”

  “Fricassée d’Homard à la Crème d’Estragon.”

  “Fricassee, yes. And named à la Madame Delphine Daffis Escoffier?”

  “It would sell many covers.” He took ink and paper and began to write.

  “Very good,” she said. “Write this, too—‘When it comes to the act of preparing lobsters, one must first open a bottle of the very best champagne that one can find. I am quite fond of the Moët.’ ”

  Sabine poured the champagne they had brought into a glass bowl and without hesitation plunged the struggling lobsters into it head first. “Hold the lobster until he is sedated and a peaceful death can be assumed.”

  “An entire bottle?”

  “He told me this himself.”

  They watched as the lobsters began to slow. Sabine turned the oven on high and continued to dictate.

  “Now you must ask yourself an essential question. Are you a sensitive person or a beast like me? If you are a beast, you should simply cut the lobsters cleanly down the middle without a second thought.”

  “That’s ridiculous. How else can you fricassee if not to cut them in two?”

  “You can put them in a hot oven until they stop moving.”

  “No one’s going to do that.”

  She tossed the lobsters into the oven. Slammed the door shut.

  “They’ll overcook.”

  “They’ll be fine.”

  Bobo poured some Moët from the bowl into the two jelly jars. “To Papa.”

  “The tears of lobsters.”

  Sabine checked her watch; it was well past supper. She hadn’t eaten. She wanted a cigarette, but not now. Not in the kitchen.

  “The rest of it should be simple,” Bobo said. “Chop tarragon, shallot. Add butter to a pôele. Sauté. Add shelled lobster tail and then crème fraîche. Cover. 10 minutes.”

  “Even a housewife could do it?”

  “Even you. It can be on the menu next week. Un Dîner d’Amoureux from Escoffier to Escoffier. We will begin with scrambled eggs served in their shell with wild osetra caviar and follow with a casserole of pigeon and peas. Pigeon would be an amusing addition. Le Pigeon aux Petits Pois en Cocott
e. Then finish simply with wild strawberries served with Brie that has been drizzled with candied lavender and honey. A refreshing finale, not heavy. This way the lovers will still have energy for each other.”

  Sabine took the lobsters out of the oven. Split them in half. Chopped the herbs. Bobo poured her another glass of champagne from the bowl.

  “He could deny he wrote this,” she said.

  “We’ll insist.”

  “If he didn’t want to create a dish for his wife, perhaps it was for private reasons.”

  Bobo took a long sip from his glass. “It is a romantic story that he created one last menu for his wife of sixty-odd years, is it not?”

  “But it is just a story.”

  “The story is everything.”

  Upstairs in his room, Escoffier was still working. His hands shook so badly that the ink stained his hands, his desk and the cuffs of his neatly pressed shirt. He could barely read what he’d written, but he wrote furiously,

  “This is a difficult dish; do not allow the seemingly simple ingredients to deceive you. Potatoes. Butter. Cream. Each ingredient must be put together in a particular fashion and in the prescribed manner. Every choice you make, every step you alter, affects your ability to change the ordinary into the extraordinary. You must be brave. You cannot falter. This is a dish of quiet miracles. You must believe in them.”

  He wrote so quickly that his hand began to cramp. He had to hurry to finish. After all, Madame Escoffier was waiting.

  The Complete Escoffier: A Memoir in Meals

  CHERRIES JUBILEE

  Always name a successor to manage your kitchen. Groom him well and keep him at all costs. The fire at the Carlton made me realize this. Even though I was at the age of retirement, I was unwilling to accept it.

  The fire came up through the kitchen elevator and reached the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel within minutes. There are various versions as to how it started. I was not in the kitchen at the time, but upstairs in my rooms meeting with a publisher. Many of the hotel guests were changing for dinner and were in various stages of undress. Some were in their baths.

  When the fire made its way up the elevator shaft, the floor beneath me caught fire and began to smoke. When the doors opened, I ran into the hallway and all I could see was smoke. I could hear screaming and praying. Smoke was everywhere and the elevator I had just been standing in burst into flames.

  “Come with me!” I shouted and continued to shout. “Follow me!” I knew where the fire escape was. “Take my hand. Take my hand.”

  And they did. I took the hand of the woman next to me and she took the next person’s hand and one by one we formed a chain, some of us dressed, some of us naked, but all of us holding on to each other. We raced the flames. As we ran I threw open every door, screaming, “Follow me. Follow my voice.”

  And then suddenly I thought, Where is Finney?

  The Broadway actor Jameson Lee Finney was an agreeable sort of man. He’d come to Europe for a vacation and was departing within the week to rejoin his new bride in America. He often held court in the dining room and was always complimentary to me about the fish: the sole in particular. How he loved it.

  Americans can be very enthusiastic about many things, including fish.

  “Monsieur Finney?”

  He did not answer although I had seen him go to his room to dress for dinner just moments before I entered the elevator.

  When I finally pushed through the door of the fire escape, the cold night air pushed the smoke back. I could not see Jameson anywhere. The hallway was black with smoke, and dark, but I knew where his room was; three doors from mine. I took a deep breath and ran back for him. His door was unlocked. I ran in.

  “Finney?!”

  Nothing. Fire suddenly wrapped itself around the doorway. “Monsieur Finney?!” No answer. My lungs were closing down. I pulled the blanket from the bed.

  I saw the bathroom door.

  I remember thinking that I should open it. But the fire was suddenly moving through the room. I wrapped the blanket around me, and ran into the hall. The blanket was burning. Fire slid down walls as if water.

  “Finney?!”

  I ran. I ran as fast as I could and at the end of the hallway, I dropped the blanket, and threw myself through the open door of the fire escape.

  The guests were all still standing on the roof. Trapped. The fire had burned the two floors below us. I looked over the edge; there was a naked woman hanging from a balcony. One floor below her, a man in a towel was getting ready to jump to the street below.

  Our only salvation was to leap across to the next building, His Majesty’s Theater, and then make our way down that fire escape and out into the street.

  “Jump!” I said. “Everyone jump!”

  It was only two or three feet at the most, but no one moved.

  On the street below, people were screaming. “Jump.”

  No one moved.

  “Follow me.”

  I took off my shoes and jumped across to the building, then opened my arms. “I’ll catch you,” I said. “Follow me.”

  One by one, the guests leapt across into the night, into my arms and into safety. I often staggered back, nearly toppled by the weight of them, but no matter. We were all safe.

  In the sinister glow of the flames, we applauded. Joyous. Relieved.

  I tried to keep Finney out of my mind. He is safe. Safe.

  The moment was so moving and so tragic that I have never forgotten it.

  “Follow me.”

  Two hundred fifty firemen and twenty-five engines soon arrived on the scene. My kitchen was flooded, although the dining room was untouched. While the firemen worked above us putting out the flames, my staff found their way to the kitchen. At 1 a.m. the press found us working to salvage whatever we could. There was at least two million francs worth of damage.

  Apparently, I was asked what I thought about the fire. I don’t remember being asked anything at all.

  “What do you expect?” I was quoted as saying, “I have roasted so many millions of chickens in the twelve years I have been at this hotel that perhaps they wanted to take their revenge and roast me in turn. But they have only succeeded in singeing my feathers.”

  I remember that we were all standing in the kitchen laughing. But I try not to think about that.

  Despite the damage, we reopened within the week. Our first menu included Soles Coquelin, Jameson Lee Finney’s favorite dish. He so loved fish. When they found him he was in the bathroom, naked. His body was burned beyond recognition.

  I often think of him paralyzed by fear, waiting to be saved.

  It was time to relinquish my post.

  And so, I groomed Ba. Nguye˜ˆn Sinh Cung was his proper name. “The Accomplished,” he said it meant in Vietnamese, although everyone called him “Ba.” He was a frail young man, kindhearted, intelligent and polite. He cared for the poor, as I did. The first time he came to my attention was when he was a dishwasher. He would often send large uneaten pieces of meat back to the kitchen to be trimmed and saved.

  When I asked him why he did this, he said, “These things shouldn’t be thrown away. You could give them to the poor.”

  He did not yet know of our decades-long arrangement with the Sisters, our Quail Pilaf à la Little Sisters of the Poor and their Gala Nights.

  Ba had a chef’s heart, although most chefs would have just trimmed the meat, put it back on the plate and served it to another diner.

  “My dear young friend, please listen to me,” I said. “Leave your revolutionary ideas aside for now, and I will teach you the art of cooking, which will bring you a lot of money. Do you agree?”

  He stayed with me four years. I thought he would remain forever.

  His French was beautiful. He was such a loyalist tha
t he and his fiancée, a dressmaker, Marie Brière, wrote impassioned articles criticizing the use of English words by French sportswriters. They demanded Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré outlaw such Franglish as “le manager,” “le round,” and “le knock-out.” I agreed entirely.

  We spent many a pleasant afternoon perfecting the art of pâte brisée. Pastry was a passion of his. More butter, less butter; one kind of flour or the other—he had the mind of a chemist and would cheerfully spend hours working to create the perfect crust. He was a very careful man.

  I now believe that the fire would not have happened if Ba had been there. And if it did, he would have opened that bathroom door. Despite his frailness, Ba had a fearless air about him.

  Unfortunately, one evening after the kitchen had closed Ba came into my office and resigned. The French had overthrown the Emperor of Vietnam, Duy Tan. I felt as if I had betrayed Ba myself.

  “It is time, my friend,” he said. “Adieu, mon ami.” He kissed me on both cheeks. “I hope that someday my people will call me ‘Ho Chí Minh,’ ‘Bringer of Light.’”

  I did not know what to say.

  The night Ba walked out of my kitchen, I had the same feeling that I had the night of the fire, the same helplessness.

  “Follow me,” I said but he was already out the door and could not hear.

  Later, I was told that Ba changed his name to Nguyen Ái Quoc, Nguyen the Patriot, and had been held in prison until he’d died of tuberculosis.

  Although the information was from a low-ranking French government official, and therefore suspect, the thought still pains me. If this is true, this good, kind man died without becoming the “Bringer of Light,” without leaving a legacy in the world.

  “Follow me.”

  If only he had heard me. Not everyone can make a mark on this world, but Ba could have. He had that quality. He was a leader. But now he will be sadly forgotten.

  There is so much forgetting in this world. My Cherries Jubilee is a very good example of this.

  While everyone who eats this dish will always think of the great Queen Victoria, her Jubilee, and remember that cherries were her favorite food, the recipe does not contain ice cream. It never did. If there had been ice cream, the dish would not have been so embraced by the Queen as representative of her spirit as a monarch. It was the lushness of the cherries, the dark sweetness that she enjoyed. They are by design an erotic fruit—does a cherry not remind one of a woman’s own dark fruit? This fact did not escape the Queen. She ate it greedily. She was a complicated woman.