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Chopped Aspic Jelly
Remove the skin and bones from the fowl, and cut it up into small joints, steep them for fifteen minutes in a marinade made with oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt. Then drain them quite dry on a cloth, mask them all over very smoothly with some mayonnaise sauce stiffened with a little aspic jelly. Dish up these pieces of fowl on a thick bed of well-seasoned salad, shred finely and arrange in a pyramid form. Garnish the base with chopped aspic jelly, neatly cut cucumber, and the top with sprigs of tarragon and chervil.
A cold entrée in the late-Victorian display style: jointed fowl coated in stiffened mayonnaise, set on shredded salad, ringed with chopped jelly. The recipe assumes you already have a cooked bird and a pan of aspic on hand.
- The fowl is already cookedNothing here cooks the bird — it is skinned, jointed, marinated briefly and coated cold. Use a poached or roasted chicken, cooled and firm; a 4-5 lb bird stands in for a Victorian fowl. Never marinate and coat raw poultry as the wording might suggest.
- Aspic jellyA savoury gelatine set from strong veal or chicken stock, clarified with egg white. A modern equivalent is well-reduced, thoroughly skimmed stock set with about 1 tablespoon powdered gelatine per pint, which gives a jelly firm enough to chop and hold its edges.
- Chopping the jellySet the aspic in a shallow tray so it is no more than half an inch deep, turn it out onto damp parchment, and chop with a large cold knife wiped between strokes. Work quickly and keep it refrigerated until the moment of serving — warm hands turn chopped aspic to slush.
- Stiffening the mayonnaiseWhisk cool, liquid-but-tacky aspic into the mayonnaise a spoonful at a time, roughly one part jelly to three or four parts sauce. Too hot and the mayonnaise splits; too set and it goes lumpy. Coat the joints while the mixture still flows, then chill to fix the surface.
- "Marinade" and "mask"The marinade is simply a vinaigrette — oil, vinegar, pepper, salt; the recipe gives no proportions. To mask is to coat evenly and opaquely so no meat shows; two thin coats, chilled between, look far better than one thick one.
- Raw egg in the sauceThe mayonnaise is never heated. If serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs or a good bought mayonnaise thinned slightly before adding the aspic.
- Keep it coldAn assembled dish of jellied chicken should not sit out. Build it on a chilled platter, refrigerate until service, and return leftovers within two hours; gelatine and mayonnaise both slump and both spoil.
- Herbs and yieldChervil has a faint anise note and wilts fast — add the sprigs last. If unavailable, tarragon alone will do rather than parsley, which changes the flavour entirely. One fowl dressed this way serves four to six as a cold entrée.
This is a mayonnaise de volaille in all but name — the cold chicken salad long established in French professional cookery, which reached English kitchens as a summer entrée and buffet dish. The technique of coating cold cooked meat in a sauce set with jelly is the same one that produces chaud-froid, and aspic was prized as much for looks as for flavour: it sealed the surface and gave the cook something to chop into glittering garnish. The recipe assumes a kitchen already stocked with clarified stock jelly, which is why it begins at the assembly rather than the stockpot. Chervil and tarragon in the finish mark it as a French-trained composition; both were common in the late-nineteenth-century kitchen garden, and chervil in particular largely dropped out of English use in the century that followed.