Home › Savouries and Hors d'Oeuvre › Fleurettes de Foie-gras
Fleurettes de Foie-gras
(Mayonnaise of Foie-gras.) Ingredients.
One medium-sized tin or terrine of Foie-gras Pâte.
The page as reproduced gives only the ingredient line; the method belonged to the surrounding text and is not present here. What follows is context for reading it rather than a set of instructions to follow.
- Pâté, not whole liverPate, not whole liver -- The recipe calls for pate de foie-gras, a smooth forcemeat of liver bound with fat and often truffle, rather than a whole lobe.
- "Mayonnaise" in the older senseIn late-Victorian menu French a mayonnaise is a cold composed dish, usually masked in sauce and set with aspic, not simply a bowl of emulsified sauce. The English gloss here signals a cold, moulded presentation, not a dressing stirred through.
- FleurettesLiterally "little flowers". The name describes the shape of the finished garnish rather than any ingredient.
- Keep it coldFoie-gras pâté is largely fat and softens fast in the hand. Anything piped from it needs a thoroughly chilled tube, a chilled tray and a short return to the refrigerator before it is coated or served, or the shapes slump.
- Where it sat in the mealSavouries came after the sweet at a formal dinner, served in small numbers on croutes or biscuits, one or two pieces a head. Whether this dish was intended for that course or as a cold entree is not stated here.
- Method missingSince the working instructions are not on this page, treat the entry as a menu note. A current recipe for piped foie-gras rosettes or a foie-gras mousse will supply the technique.
Manuals of this class were written for cooks working in large private households and for the pupils of the cookery schools that multiplied in Britain from the 1870s, and their French titles are deliberate: a menu written in French was the mark of a well-run table. Foie-gras reached those tables almost entirely as an imported preserve, in tins and glazed terriers from Strasbourg and the south-west of France, which is why the ingredient list begins with a tin rather than a liver. The savoury course is generally said to have been a British invention with no real French equivalent, a small, salty, highly seasoned mouthful served after the sweet and before dessert. Dishes of this kind are rich, cold, made in advance, and arranged to look considerably more elaborate than the single ingredient behind them.