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POULARDE, GALANTINE OF (an excellent supper dish)
This dish is always served cold: Split a poularde up the back, and bone it without injuring the skin. If the cook is not experienced in the art of boning poultry, this had better be done by the poulterer. Lay the bird flat upon the table, breast downwards, and season with pepper, salt, and aromatic spices. Spread on it a layer an inch thick either of nicely-seasoned sausage-meat or of good forcemeat, and lay on this long slices of cold boiled tongue or ham, and a few small black truffles, if these are obtainable. Repeat these layers until the galantine is sufficiently filled up. Sew it up securely with twine, as nearly as possible in its original form; roll it lightly in an oiled cloth, and fasten the ends with string. Lay the bones and any trimmings of meat that may be at hand in a stewpan (if there are none, a calf's foot must be used). Lay the fowl upon these, and add a large onion stuck with one clove, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, a carrot, and as much good veal stock as will barely cover the fowl. Cover closely, and let it stew gently until done enough. Let it remain in the stock until partially cold. Take it up, and having strained the gravy, reduce quickly to a jelly and clarify it (see JELLY FOR PIES, TO CLARIFY). Part of this jelly may be used to glaze the galantine, and a little isinglass may be dissolved in it to stiffen it. Let it remain until quite cold, then remove the cloth, take out the stitches, and glaze the poularde. When the jelly is quite stiff, cut it into cubes or diamonds, and use it for garnishing the dish. Time to stew the galantine, one hour and three-quarters, or two hours if very large. Probable cost, varying with the ingredients. Sufficient for a supper dish.
A classic cold galantine: a boned bird stuffed, rolled in cloth, poached in its own stock, then glazed with the reduced jelly. Nothing here is difficult, but the sequence rewards planning over two days.
- What a poularde isA poularde is a young hen fattened for the table, larger and richer than a spring chicken. A 4–5 lb roasting chicken is the practical equivalent; a small capon works if you can get one.
- Take the boning offerThe book's advice to let the poulterer do it still stands: ask a butcher to bone the bird leaving the skin intact, or buy it boned. Note that the recipe has you split the bird up the back rather than tunnel-bone it; if doing it yourself, work from the back with a small sharp knife, and taking the wing and drumstick bones out as well makes for easier slicing.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clockThe stated one and three-quarter to two hours assumes a bare simmer, never a boil, which would split the skin and squeeze the forcemeat out. The stuffing is raw sausage-meat, so the centre must reach 165F/74C; check with a probe through the cloth rather than trusting time alone.
- Cooling and food safety"Let it remain in the stock until partially cold" is fine for an hour or so, but do not leave a stuffed bird sitting in warm broth for an evening. Once it has stopped steaming, move pan and all to the refrigerator and chill overnight before unwrapping.
- Isinglass and the calf's footIsinglass is dried sturgeon swim bladder, once the standard setting agent; powdered gelatin replaces it directly, about 1 to 2 teaspoons per cup of reduced stock depending on how firm you want the glaze. The calf's foot serves the same purpose — a couple of split pig's trotters or extra chicken wings and backs will give a stock that sets on its own.
- The clothA doubled length of scalded cheesecloth or a clean cotton napkin, lightly oiled, is what is meant. Roll firmly and tie at both ends and in two or three places along the length so the galantine keeps a cylinder shape as it cooks.
- Truffles and substitutionsBlack truffles were a garnish of status as much as flavour. Without them, pistachios, brined green peppercorns or dried porcini soaked and chopped give the dark speckle the slices are meant to show.
- Clarifying and glazingReduce the strained stock until it coats a spoon, then clarify with egg white and shell if you want a clear aspic. Brush the cold galantine with jelly that has cooled to the consistency of thin syrup, chilling between coats; three thin coats look better than one thick one.
- Yield"Sufficient for a supper dish" means a whole bird on a platter, enough for a buffet of eight to ten. Slice cold, with a long thin blade, no thicker than a quarter inch.
Galantine comes into English cookery from French charcuterie. The name is sometimes linked to Old French galine, a hen, though it is at least as often derived from galatine, a jellied dish; the etymology is unsettled. The technique — bone the bird, layer it with forcemeat and tongue, poach it in a gelatinous stock, then set and glaze it — belongs to the ornamental cold table of the nineteenth century, when a household with a large dining room and a cool larder was expected to produce something impressive that could be carved without a cook standing by. Cassell's gives the entry under the bird's name and calls it a supper dish; cold dishes of this kind suited late evening eating, when hot food was impractical. The instruction to send the bird to the poulterer for boning suggests how much preparation an urban Victorian kitchen might buy in, and the calf's foot in the stewpan how gelatin was extracted at home rather than measured from an envelope.