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SALMI, COLD (for suppers, etc.)
Roast a couple of partridges, a pheasant, or any other game. Cut them into neat joints, and with the bones and trimmings make a salmi sauce, according to the recipe given a little farther on. When this is pleasantly flavoured, mix with it a third of its quantity in very stiff aspic jelly. Cover the joints of the birds thickly with this, and let it get cold and stiff upon them. Pile them high on a dish, and garnish with clear aspic jelly cut into dice.
A cold buffet dish built from roast game, its own sauce, and enough aspic to set the coating firm. The hinge is the ratio: one part stiff aspic to three parts sauce, chilled until it grips the meat rather than sliding off it.
- Salmi sauce, in shortThe cross-reference is to a sauce built on the crushed bones and trimmings; period versions are brown sauces simmered with stock and wine or Madeira, with shallot and herbs, then strained and reduced. Any well-reduced game or brown sauce with a splash of Madeira will stand in; it needs to be glossy and strongly flavoured, since chilling flattens seasoning noticeably.
- Aspic jellyPeriod aspic was a clarified, well-seasoned stock set with its own gelatine from calves' feet or knuckle. Use a strong game or veal stock, clarified with egg white, and set it with powdered gelatine at the firm end of the range — roughly 1 tbsp per pint for a coating jelly that will hold at room temperature on a buffet.
- "A third of its quantity"Measure the finished sauce, then add liquid aspic equal to a third of that volume. Warm both to blood heat so they combine smoothly, then cool the mixture over ice, stirring, until it thickens to the consistency of unwhipped cream before you coat the joints.
- Roasting the birdsThe book gives no oven setting, so these are modern equivalents: two partridges (about 12 oz each) roast in roughly 20-30 minutes in a hot oven, around 400-425F; a pheasant of about 2.5 lb takes 45-60 minutes. Cook to just done and no further — the meat is served cold and dry breast is unforgiving. Rest, then joint while still slightly warm, which makes cleaner cuts.
- Coating techniqueSet the joints on a rack over a tray, spoon the thickened sauce over, and refrigerate 15 minutes between coats. Two or three thin coats give a smooth even finish; one thick coat sags and pools.
- The diced garnishSet clear aspic in a shallow tray to about half an inch, turn it out and cut into small dice with a wet knife. It should be firmer than the coating jelly so the cubes keep their edges.
- Yield and servingTwo partridges or one pheasant will give somewhere between two and four modest supper portions, depending on what else is on the table. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead, keep refrigerated until serving, and return leftovers to the refrigerator promptly — a moist, gelatine-rich dish sitting warm is the one real risk here.
Salmi (also salmis) is a French preparation in which game is part-roasted, jointed, and finished in a sauce made from its own bones and trimmings, usually enriched with wine; the name is generally traced to salmigondis, the old word for a hotchpotch of meats that also gave English "salmagundi". By the late nineteenth century the hot salmi had become a standard of the game season, and Cassell's converts it to a cold one by folding aspic into the sauce. That instinct explains a whole genre of period cookery: the supper table, the ball buffet and the shooting-party luncheon all wanted food that could be made in advance, carried, and displayed. Aspic was the technology that made it possible, and a coating jelly that held its shine under lamplight was a mark of a competent kitchen.