French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [61]
Thym THYME A sprig of thyme is one of the routine ingredients of the bouquet garni, and in small quantities thyme, both wild and cultivated, flavours many stuffings, stews and liqueurs.
Tilleul LIME TREE Dried lime flowers are used to make a soothing infusion or tisane.
Tisane A mild infusion of herbs or flowers with properties either calming, tonic or stimulating. Tea, which is much more widely drunk in France than is generally supposed, is more and more replacing the old-fashioned tisane.
Tomates concassées Roughly chopped tomatoes, usually skinned.
Tomates, Concentré de Concentrated tomato purée in the Italian manner.
Tomates, Confiture de Originally a semi-concentrated and sweetened tomato purée but now a term which seems to have become interchangeable with concentré de tomates. Also a delicious jam in the English sense.
Tomates, Fondue de A lightly cooked, or melted, sauce of fresh skinned tomatoes, seasonings and sometimes onion, garlic or other flavouring vegetable. ‘Happy,’ says one French cookery writer, ‘is the cook who knows how to use the tomato with discretion.’
Truffes TRUFFLES Here is an interesting extract on the fascinating subject of truffles from the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de l’Epicerie, by A. Seigneurie, 1904:
‘Variety of parasitic mushroom which grows on the roots of certain oak and hazel-nut trees. There are a great number of varieties of the truffle, of which the only common characteristics are their interior structure, their mode of growth, the fact that they are eatable, and a certain similarity of taste; but in dimension, size, colour and shape they differ extremely one from the other. While certain varieties rarely exceed a few grammes in weight, others attain exaggerated proportions and even occasionally exceed a weight of 20 kilos.
‘The truffle grows most readily in sandy or clay and chalky soils. Divers varieties are found in various climates. The most highly prized variety is, without contradiction, the truffle of the Périgord, black, with a rough skin and a penetrating scent. It is found particularly in the Charente, in the neighbourhood of Périgueux and Angoulême, also in the Gard, the Isère, the Drôme, the Ardèche, the Hérault, the Tarn, the Vaucluse, the Lozère and the Jura. Those of the Drôme, with firm flesh and an agreeable flavour, are remarkable for their regularity of shape; they are threaded with whitish veins.
‘Those of the Gard are sometimes of a softer consistency, somewhat spongy with a fairly pronounced smell of musk, for which reason they are often avoided.
‘The nature of the soil has much influence upon the flavour of the truffle. Those found in Burgundy usually have a taste of resin, and those which come frcm Naples smell of sulphur.
‘In Algeria, and in the whole of North Africa, the sand yields a truffle called terfez, with a smooth skin, round, and of a pure white both outside and inside. It has a delicate flavour and has been known since times of the greatest antiquity, for it figures in Roman and Punic feasts.
‘The truffle is, in general, a savoury condiment with a penetrating scent. Its action stimulates the digestive organs. As for its legendary reputation,5 it is, obviously, exaggerated.
‘Recently it has been found possible to promote the artificial production of truffles either by planting or sowing so-called truffle-oaks which carry with them the spores of the truffles, or by putting on the ground, amid oak or hazel-nut plantations, a mycelium obtained from a mash of truffles in water which has been spread upon the green leaves of these trees.
‘The truffle harvest, whether