One Egg (II)
Seasoning. G2 Breadcrumbs. Frying Fat.
About two ounces of Chicken Forcemeat.
Fry some very thin pancakes in the butter.
Stamp some rounds out of them about two inches in diameter.
Prepare a salpicon as follows:-Cut the foiegras, mushrooms, and sweetbread into very small dice. Put this in a sauté-pan with the sauce.
When thoroughly hot add the yolk of an egg; season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of grated nutmeg. Put it on a plate and let it cool.
When cold, shape it into little balls; place these in the centre of the rounds of pancake. Put a little raw chicken forcemeat round the edge of each, and fold over the same as rissoles. Brush them over with egg, dip them in breadcrumbs, and fry them a golden colour. Dish them up on a folded napkin, and serve hot.
Ris de Veau en Kari. (Curried Sweetbreads.) Ingredients.
A classic salpicon fritter: a rich diced filling bound with egg yolk, chilled firm, wrapped in a thin pancake and sealed with raw chicken forcemeat before frying. The quantities are incomplete in the text, so treat it as a method rather than a shopping list.
- The hinge: chill the filling hardThe salpicon must be completely cold and firm before it is rolled into balls, or it will not hold its shape and the pancake will tear in the fat. An hour in the refrigerator, spread thin on a plate, does it.
- SalpiconSimply a mixture of ingredients cut into small, even dice and bound with a little thick sauce. Here the dice should be no larger than 1/8 inch so the balls stay compact.
- "The sauce"Unspecified. The quantity list is truncated, so the intended sauce is unknown; a few spoonfuls of something well reduced and thick enough to coat is what the method requires, since a thin sauce will leave the mixture too loose to shape even when cold.
- SweetbreadVeal sweetbread, which must be soaked, blanched, trimmed of membrane and gently poached before dicing. The recipe assumes this preparation has already been done; raw sweetbread will not work here.
- Chicken forcemeatRaw breast meat pounded or processed with a little egg white and cream to a smooth paste, used as a sealing collar rather than a filling. Since it goes into the fat raw, keep the layer thin and even so it cooks through in the same time as the crumb browns.
- PancakesPlain unsweetened crêpes, fried as thin as you can manage in butter, then left to cool before stamping. Two-inch rounds are small; a plain cutter or a wine glass rim works.
- FryingThe recipe asks only for a golden colour. Deep fat at a moderate frying heat, turning once, gives a golden crust and a hot centre; fat that is too hot will colour the crumb before the raw forcemeat is cooked through.
- Serving and yieldThe recipe dishes them on a folded napkin; a warmed dish lined with paper is the modern equivalent. The quantities are incomplete, so any yield is a guess: two ounces of forcemeat spread as a thin collar would stretch across a modest number of two-inch fritters.
Fritters of this kind sit at the centre of late-Victorian and Edwardian professional cookery, where salpicon — the standard French culinary term for a bound dice of cooked meats, offal, mushrooms and truffle — was the usual way to turn expensive trimmings into a great many small hot dishes. Foie gras, mushroom and veal sweetbread was among the most luxurious combinations available, and encasing it in a crêpe and a collar of chicken forcemeat before crumbing is a kitchen economy as much as a refinement: the wrapper holds a soft filling together through the fryer. Recipes of this sort were written for cooks who were expected to reproduce restaurant garnishes on demand, which is why the instructions assume you already know how to blanch a sweetbread and reduce a sauce without being told.