Croustades
Ingredients.
Half a pound of Puff-paste.
Quarter of a pound of Quenelle Meat.
Quarter of a pound of Chicken Mixture, or Quarter of a pound of Oyster Mixture.
Line some small plain moulds with puff-paste, fill them with raw rice to keep the paste in position, bake them a light brown, turn out the rice and the cases out of the mould and spread the inside of the cases with a thin layer of quenelle meat, fill the centre with chicken or oyster mixture, bake again a few minutes to cook the quenelle meat. Serve very hot on a folded serviette.
Croûtes à l'Alsacienne.
Ingredients.
One tablespoonful of Cream.
A late-Victorian savoury course pastry: blind-baked puff paste cases lined with forcemeat and filled with a bound chicken or oyster ragout. The recipe assumes you have the three component preparations already made up elsewhere in the book.
- The hinge: the second bake must cook the forcemeatQuenelle meat is raw pounded chicken or veal with egg and cream. The "few minutes" of the original is optimistic for a cold-filled case; bake until the forcemeat is firm and set through, 165F at the centre, before serving.
- Component recipes assumedQuenelle meat is a fine forcemeat; the chicken and oyster mixtures are cooked meat or shucked oysters bound in a thick velouté or béchamel. Both fillings should be cold and stiff when they go into the cases, or the pastry softens.
- OystersIf using the oyster mixture, the oysters should be barely poached in their own liquor, no more than a minute or two, before being bound in the sauce. They will get a second heating in the oven, and oysters cooked twice at length turn to rubber.
- Oven temperaturesThe original gives none, only 'a light brown'. Blind-bake the lined moulds in a hot oven, in the region of 425F, until light brown and dry, judging by colour rather than by the clock, then drop to around 375-400F for the filled second bake.
- Moulds and blind baking"small plain moulds" means smooth-sided, ungrooved moulds of the dariole or barquette sort rather than fluted ones. Modern practice is the same: raw rice or ceramic beans on a paper liner, so the paste holds its shape. Chill the lined moulds before baking or the puff paste will slump.
- WeightsHalf a pound of puff paste is about 225 g and will line roughly ten to twelve small moulds. Quarter of a pound each of forcemeat and filling is about 115 g each, which is a scant tablespoon per case.
- Serving"On a folded serviette" is the period presentation for hot fried and baked savouries, the napkin absorbing fat and stopping the cases sliding. A doily on a warmed dish does the same job. Serves six as a savoury course, or makes a dozen canapés.
- The stray line at the end"Croûtes à l'Alsacienne. Ingredients. One tablespoonful of Cream." is the opening of the next entry in the book, caught by the page break. It has nothing to do with the croustades.
Croustades belong to the savoury, the small hot dish of anchovy, cheese, oyster or seasoned meat that closed a formal British dinner after the sweet and before dessert, a course peculiar to English rather than French service though its dishes carried French names. The word comes through French from the Italian crostata, from crosta, crust: the point is the edible container, whether cut from fried bread, hollowed from a roll, or as here raised in puff paste. Cookery books of this class appear to have been written for households with a trained cook and a hierarchy of preparations already standing in the larder, at least to judge by the fact that the recipe can call for a quarter pound of "quenelle meat" and a quarter pound of "chicken mixture" without further comment; the reader was expected to turn to those entries. Oysters appear casually here, though by this date the native beds were already in decline and prices rising.