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Fricassee Chaudfroid
Put a nice plump chicken, trussed as for boiling, into a saucepan, with a quart of veal stock, and boil and skim in the usual way. When done, put the chicken on a dish, and boil a pint of the stock with a few mushrooms, until reduced; then, with the stewpan removed from the fire, stir in the beaten yolks of four eggs, and half a pint of cream. Season well with nutmeg, pepper, and salt, and stir in the juice of half a lemon, and a tea-spoonful of pounded sugar. Stir over the fire for a little time, but do not boil. The chicken should be cut up and piled high in the centre of a dish, and covered with the sauce. Let it become cold and firm, then garnish with aspic jelly.
A Victorian chaud-froid: a poached chicken masked in its own enriched sauce and served cold. The whole thing hinges on the custard sauce, which must thicken without ever reaching a simmer.
- The hinge: never boil the sauceFour yolks and half a pint of cream will curdle the moment the pan reaches a simmer. Pull the reduced stock off the heat before the yolks go in, then return it to the lowest flame and stir constantly until it coats a spoon at around 180F (82C). If it looks grainy, it has gone too far.
- MeasuresIn the imperial measure of a British Victorian book a quart is about 1.1 litres and a pint about 570 ml, with half a pint around 285 ml (roughly 4 cups, 2 cups and 1 cup if you work in US measure, which is a little smaller). "Pounded sugar" is loaf sugar crushed fine; a teaspoon of ordinary caster sugar does the same job of rounding out the lemon.
- Veal stockRarely sold now. A light unsalted chicken stock is the closest substitute, though it will set less firmly; adding a split veal or pork trotter to the poaching pot restores the gelatine that makes a chaud-froid sauce cling.
- Poaching, not boiling"Boil and skim in the usual way" is best read today as a bare shiver of the surface rather than a true boil. A 3-4 lb bird held at 170-180F (77-82C) for 50-60 minutes gives moist meat; a rolling boil shreds the breast. Cook to 165F (74C) at the thigh.
- Reducing the pintTake the pint of poaching liquid down by about half with the mushrooms before enriching it. Under-reduced stock gives a thin sauce that slides off the cold chicken instead of setting on it.
- CoolingThe dish is meant to set cold, but do not leave cooked chicken and cream standing at room temperature for hours as the original assumes. Cool it quickly and refrigerate; bring it back to cool room temperature for perhaps twenty minutes before serving.
- Aspic garnishThe recipe assumes you have aspic to hand; a cook of the period would most likely have clarified it from stock. Powdered gelatine dissolved in strained, well-seasoned stock, set in a shallow tray and chopped, gives the same glittering border with far less work.
- YieldOne chicken, cut into joints and piled up, serves four to six as a cold main course.
Chaud-froid — literally "hot-cold" — is a French preparation in which meat or poultry is cooked hot, then masked with a sauce that sets to a glossy coat as it chills; the name is generally traced to eighteenth-century French kitchen practice, and Carême and his successors made it a fixture of the buffet table. Cassell's places it among the fricassees; the sauce here is a liaison of stock, yolks and cream rather than the pale sauce chaud-froid blanche of the professional larder cook. Dishes like this suited Victorian households for practical reasons: they could be made the day before, needed no last-minute attention, and looked their best on a cold supper table or a ball buffet, where a domed chicken glazed and ringed with chopped aspic did the work of a centrepiece.