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Aspic Jelly (Cut the breasts of one or two)
Cut the breasts of one or two pheasants into neat fillets free from skin and bone, put them on a buttered baking-sheet, sprinkle over them a little salt and a few drops of lemon-juice, cover them with buttered paper, and cook in the oven for about ten minutes. Press the fillets till cold, trim them again a little, cover one side of the fillets with good chaudfroid brown sauce, and the other side with mayonnaise, set them in a sauté-pan with aspic jelly; when set cut them out, dish them on a border of aspic the white side up, serve with salad in the centre.
Timbales à la Moëlle de Bœuf.
Ingredients.
Half a pound of Chicken.
Half a gill of White Sauce.
Half a gill of Cream.
A cold buffet entrée from the age of the chaud-froid: cooked pheasant fillets masked on one side in brown sauce and on the other in mayonnaise, glazed with aspic and served in a jelly border. A few things in the text need translating, and one line is not part of the dish at all.
- The run-on endingThe last three lines — "Timbales à la Moëlle de Bœuf" with chicken, white sauce and cream — are the heading and ingredient list of the next recipe, run together in the original setting. Ignore them here.
- The hinge: both coatings must setOrdinary mayonnaise will slide off a chilled fillet. Both masking sauces in this style are stiffened with dissolved aspic or gelatine — mayonnaise collée on the white side, brown chaud-froid (espagnole or demi-glace with aspic) on the dark. Coat while the sauces are cool but still flowing, and chill hard between coats.
- Oven and timingThe original gives no oven heat, only 'cook in the oven for about ten minutes'; a moderate oven, around 350F/175C, is a reasonable modern reading. Ten minutes suits thin trimmed breast fillets under buttered paper; game birds vary a great deal in size, so check with a thermometer rather than the clock - modern guidance for poultry is 165F/74C at the thickest point.
- "Press the fillets till cold"Lay them flat on a tray, cover with paper and set a light board or second tray with a small weight on top. This flattens them so they take an even coat of sauce and cut cleanly; it is a presentation step, not a cooking one.
- The sauté-pan of aspicA wide shallow pan is filled with a thin layer of liquid aspic and left to set; the coated fillets are laid on it so the undersides do not stick or dry, then cut free with a knife around each one. A rimmed sheet pan does the same job.
- The border"A border of aspic" means clear jelly set in a ring mould and turned out onto the dish, the fillets arranged around the top of the ring and the centre filled with dressed salad at the last moment so the leaves do not weep into the jelly.
- Aspic strengthPeriod aspic came from a well-reduced veal or game stock that set on its own. Modern stock rarely does; count on about 1 to 1.5 teaspoons of powdered gelatine per cup for a coating glaze, and slightly more for a mould that must be turned out.
- Yield and holdingTwo pheasants give four fillets — four small portions or two as a light main course. Assemble the day of serving and keep refrigerated until the last moment; a gelatine-set dish left standing in a warm room both softens and becomes a food-safety problem.
Chaud-froid - literally "hot-cold" - is the technique that defined the late-Victorian and Edwardian cold table: something cooked hot, then chilled and masked in a sauce enriched with jelly so it holds a glossy, carvable surface. The name is often traced, on traditional rather than documented grounds, to a French nobleman's supper interrupted and eaten cold. By the time this book was written, the method had been thoroughly codified in professional kitchens and was the mainstay of the buffet, the ball supper and the shooting-party luncheon, where dishes had to be finished hours ahead and look immaculate on arrival. Pheasant belongs squarely in that world: an autumn and winter game bird from the estate, its breast the only part fine enough for fillets, the carcass and legs typically going into the stock that becomes the aspic. The two-tone masking - brown on one face, white on the other, so the cook can turn the fillets either way for contrast on the dish - is pure display cookery, and a fair measure of how much labour a large kitchen could still assume.