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Mayonnaise Sauce (Melt the gelatine and stir it)
Melt the gelatine and stir it into the Béchamel sauce. Cut the chicken into neat joints; remove the skin, and mask each piece carefully with the white chaudfroid sauce. Dish up on chopped aspic jelly; garnish with a little of the cucumber and beetroot; the remaining beet and cucumber cut into neat pieces, stir into the mayonnaise, and serve in the centre.
Chaudfroid of Chicken (No. 2).
Another very simple chaudfroid is less rich and a nice change; leave out the aspic jelly and mayonnaise sauce, season the white sauce for masking well with tarragon, pile up the pieces of chicken neatly on the entrée dish and garnish with the white hearts of cabbage lettuces cut in halves.
Chaudfroid de Poulet en Kari.
Ingredients.
One Boiled Chicken, cut into neat joints, skin removed; or Breasts of Chicken only.
Three-quarters of a pint of Chaudfroid Sauce.
One pint of Aspic Jelly.
This is the tail end of a chaudfroid sequence — a cold entrée of poached chicken masked in a set white sauce — followed by two variations, the last of which breaks off after its ingredient list. The technique is entirely in the handling of the sauce, not in any cooking.
- The hinge: coating consistencyChaudfroid sauce must be used at the moment it will coat the back of a spoon and no more — roughly the thickness of pouring cream, at about 20–24C. Too warm and it runs off the chicken; too cool and it sets in ridges. Stir it over a bowl of iced water and test on a chilled plate.
- How much gelatineThe original gives no quantity because it belongs to an earlier page. As a working guide, a sauce meant to set firmly enough to slice wants roughly 15–20 g of leaf or powdered gelatine per 600 ml of Béchamel. Bloom it in cold water first, then dissolve it warm — never boiled, or it loses strength.
- Imperial pintsA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, so three-quarters of a pint is 15 fl oz, about 1¾ US cups; the pint of aspic is about 2½ US cups.
- Masking in layersOne coat rarely covers. Set the joints on a wire rack over a tray, ladle the sauce over, chill 15 minutes, and repeat with the sauce scraped from the tray and rewarmed. Two or three thin coats give the opaque ivory finish the book is after.
- Aspic jellyPeriod aspic was a clarified, well-reduced veal or chicken stock that set on its own gelatine. A strong homemade stock set with 8–10 g gelatine per 500 ml gives the same effect; chop it cold on a damp cloth so it stays glassy rather than smearing.
- "En Kari"Kari is a nineteenth-century French (and Anglo-French menu) spelling of curry. The dish would have used a chaudfroid sauce flavoured with curry powder; the excerpt breaks off at the ingredient list, so no method appears here.
- Cabbage lettucesIn the second version these are the soft round butterhead types, halved through the heart. A small butterhead is the closest modern equivalent; crisphead lettuce is wrong in texture for this.
- Keep it coldThis is a cooked dish served cold and it stays cold: chill the masked joints and hold them under refrigeration until they go to table. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead — the aspic weeps and the sauce dulls overnight.
- YieldOne boiled chicken jointed serves four to six as a cold entrée; breasts only will serve four.
Chaudfroid — literally "hot-cold" — is the classic French treatment for meat or poultry cooked hot, then dressed in a sauce that sets cold, and it belongs squarely to the era of the buffet table and the ambigu, when a cold entrée had to look as composed at the end of an evening as at the beginning. The white version rests on Béchamel or velouté fortified with gelatine, the brown on a reduced espagnole; both were finished with aspic for gloss. Its origin is traditionally credited to a French kitchen of the eighteenth century, a story generally repeated in the cookery literature rather than documented. What is certain is that by the late Victorian period the dish was standard in the English high-class repertoire, precisely because it demanded two skills such training prized: a clear aspic and a sauce that would set without cracking. The curried variant, "en Kari," shows how thoroughly curry powder had been absorbed into that same repertoire by the end of the century.