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ZEPHYRS (a la Parmentier)
Put one pound and a half of mashed potatoes with an ounce of butter in a stewpan, stir until hot, season with a little pepper and salt, bind with the yolks of two eggs, and put the mass on a dish to cool. Chop up two ounces of lean cooked ham, one ounce of cooked game or poultry, and one or two mushrooms, and pound them in a mortar till smooth. Add the yolks of two eggs, half a tea-spoonful of mixed mustard, two table-spoonfuls of Espagnole sauce, and one ounce of grated Parmesan, season with pepper and a pinch of nutmeg, and mix well. Butter some oval-shaped dariole moulds, sprinkle well with bread-crumbs, fill them up with the prepared mashed potatoes, and bake in the oven a nice golden colour. Scoop out the interiors, and fill up with the pounded preparation. Beat up the whites of two eggs to a stiff froth, adding a pinch of salt; cover the surface of each dariole roughly with a little of this, and return the zephyrs again into a quick oven, so as to colour the surface. Unmould carefully, dish up on a folded napkin, and serve very hot.
A late-Victorian entremets: baked potato cases hollowed out, filled with a pounded meat forcemeat, capped with meringue and browned. Nothing here is difficult, but the potato mixture has to be stiff enough to hold a shell.
- The hinge: a dry, stiff potato pasteOne and a half pounds of mashed potato bound with two yolks will only hold its shape if the potato is dry and floury — bake or steam the potatoes rather than boiling, and add no milk or cream. A wet mash will slump when you scoop out the middle and collapse when unmoulded.
- Dariole mouldsSmall straight-sided or slightly tapered metal moulds, usually somewhere between two and four fluid ounces. Individual metal dariole tins, timbale moulds or a deep muffin tin all work; oval is aesthetic, not structural. Butter and crumb them thoroughly, as instructed — the butter and crumbs together are what let them release.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe says only 'the oven' for the first baking; a moderate to fairly hot oven, roughly 375-400F, until the cases are firm and golden, will do. A 'quick oven' is conventionally reckoned at something like 400-450F, and setting the meringue needs only a few minutes; watch it, since beaten white colours suddenly.
- Espagnole sauceThe classic brown sauce — brown roux, brown stock, mirepoix, tomato, long reduction. Two tablespoons is a seasoning, not a component: a good reduced brown gravy or a demi-glace of equal thickness serves the same purpose.
- Mixed mustardNineteenth-century shorthand for mustard powder already mixed with water to a paste, i.e. prepared English mustard. Use half a teaspoon of that, not half a teaspoon of dry powder.
- Cooked game or poultryThe recipe assumes a larder with roast leftovers in it. Any well-flavoured cooked dark meat works — pheasant, duck, guinea fowl, or brown chicken meat. The point is that the filling is a use for scraps, pounded smooth.
- Pounding in a mortarA small food processor does this in seconds. Pulse the ham, meat and mushrooms to a paste before adding the yolks, cheese and sauce, or the mixture will be loose.
- Egg whitesTwo whites beaten stiff with a pinch of salt is a good deal more meringue than eight small darioles need. Beat one and keep the second in reserve; unsweetened whites deflate quickly, so beat them just before the second bake.
- YieldAbout eight darioles, enough for four as a savoury course or a light lunch dish with a salad. Serve immediately — the meringue cap softens within minutes.
"À la Parmentier" on a French or Anglo-French menu means potato, after Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the eighteenth-century French agronomist who campaigned to get the potato accepted as human food rather than fodder; the usage was well established by the time Cassell's was compiled. "Zephyr" is the other half of the joke — a west wind, invoked here for anything puffed, frothed or capped with beaten egg white, the same instinct that gave us soufflé. The dish belongs to the Victorian appetite for small, made-up entremets that turned yesterday's roast game and a heel of ham into something worth carrying in on a folded napkin, and it depends on the kind of kitchen where Espagnole sauce sat ready in a pot and Parmesan was kept in the block for grating."}