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Salpicons
Salpicons are elegant little trifles composed of poultry, game, fish, forcemeat, sweetbreads, ham, tongue, or foie gras, together with mushrooms, truffles, artichokes, etc. The various materials should be cooked separately, cut into dice, and heated in thick brown or white sauce, whichever is most suitable for them. The remains of meat and vegetables are frequently served in this way. Salpicons may either be served in a dish, with the different ingredients divided by small sippets into compartments, then covered over with bread-crumbs, and browned; or they may be put into little patties, and served on a napkin neatly garnished with parsley. The latter is the more usual method. To prepare these patties, make some good puffpaste; with a cutter stamp it into small rounds, two inches in diameter, put these on ice for a few minutes, then brush them over with beaten egg to glaze them. Dip a smaller cutter into hot water, and stamp the rounds through one-third of the thickness of the pastry. Bake the patties in a quick oven. When they are done, lift off the cover which was formed by the smaller cutter, and smooth the pastry. Have ready whatever is to form the contents of the patties. Heat it in sauce, but on no account allow it to boil, or the meat will be hard; fill the patties, put on the covers again, and serve. In large families, where a number of dishes are constantly prepared, the cost of salpicons consists principally in the trouble they take to prepare. Time to bake, fifteen to twenty minutes.
This is a method rather than a fixed recipe: cooked meat, offal or fish in dice, bound in sauce, served in puff-pastry cases. The instructions assume you already have leftovers and a saucepan of brown or white sauce on hand.
- The hinge: do not let the filling boilThe original is emphatic and correct. Diced cooked meat reheated at a simmer tightens and turns dry; bring the sauce to temperature and fold the dice in off direct heat, just until hot through. Two or three minutes is enough.
- Quick ovenFor the pastry cases, somewhere in the 400-450F range; "quick" is not a fixed figure and period usage varies. The stated fifteen to twenty minutes is realistic for two-inch rounds of puff paste at that heat; they should be well risen and dry-looking at the sides before you take them out.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toasted or fried bread, used here as dividers to keep the different meats in separate compartments in the dish. Not a garnish in the modern sense but a structural element.
- Puff pasteAll-butter frozen puff pastry works and saves an afternoon. Chilling the stamped rounds before glazing, as directed, is what keeps them from slumping; do not skip it.
- The inner cutStamping a smaller circle one-third of the way down creates a lid that lifts off after baking. Dipping that cutter in hot water gives a clean cut through cold pastry; press straight down without twisting or the layers seal and the case will not rise evenly. Note that the recipe glazes before cutting, so the cut edges stay free of egg of their own accord.
- Ingredients you will not findSweetbreads and tongue need a butcher's order; truffles can be replaced with a larger proportion of well-browned mushrooms rather than truffle oil. Foie gras is restricted in some jurisdictions.
- Sauce consistency"Thick" here means a sauce that coats and holds, roughly a heavy bechamel or a reduced espagnole. Too thin and the pastry cases collapse into paste within minutes of filling.
- Yield and timingTwo-inch cases hold about a tablespoon each; reckon three or four per person as a first course. Fill them immediately before serving, not in advance.
Salpicon reached French cookery from Spanish salpicón, generally connected with words for salting or sprinkling, though the derivation is not certain; in professional use it came to mean cooked ingredients cut to a uniform dice and bound in sauce. It is a template, and specifically a template for thrift dressed as luxury -- note the frank admission that "the remains of meat and vegetables are frequently served in this way," and that in a large household the real cost is labour, not materials. That calculation only works where kitchen labour is cheap and abundant, which in a late-Victorian establishment with a cook and kitchenmaids it was. The pastry cases described here are what French kitchens call bouchees, the small relations of the vol-au-vent, and the same filling logic survives today in croquettes, rissoles and the chicken patty.