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Petites Condoles au Parmesan
(Little Moulds of Parmesan.) Ingredients.
Three tablespoonfuls of Béchamel Sauce.
Half a gill of Aspic Jelly.
Half a gill of Cream.
One ounce of grated Parmesan Cheese.
Two ounces of grated Gruyère Cheese.
A pinch of Cayenne and Salt.
Some Short Paste or Puff Paste trimmings.
About an ounce of fresh Butter.
Line twelve very small oval or boat moulds with the paste, fill them with rice, and bake them in a moderately heated oven a nice K golden colour. Take out the rice, and put the cases on a sieve to cool. Warm up the Béchamel sauce and aspic jelly in a stewpan, add a pinch of salt and cayenne pepper, let the sauce reduce a little, and mix with the two kinds of grated cheese. Stir well, and when nearly cold add the cream (previously whipped). Stir it gently on the ice until nearly set, and then fill up the cases.
Sprinkle the top of each case with a little grated Parmesan cheese. Cream the butter, put it in a forcing-bag with a rose or leaf pipe, and ornament the condoles to taste. Keep them on the ice until required. Dish up on a folded napkin, and serve after the sweets.
A cold cheese mousse set with aspic in blind-baked pastry boats — essentially a barquette. Nothing here is difficult, but the sauce base has to be handled at the right temperature or the mousse will either break or set before it reaches the cases.
- The hinge: temperature of the baseThe b techamel-and-aspic mixture has to be at the right point when the cream goes in: the recipe says "nearly cold" — cool and still fluid, but not yet beginning to set. If it stiffens first, warm it very gently rather than beating it smooth.
- A gillA gill is 5 fl oz in British measure, so half a gill is about 2.5 fl oz, a scant third of a cup. That applies to both the aspic and the cream.
- Aspic jellyA clarified, well-reduced meat or poultry stock stiff enough to set firm on its own. Failing that, use about 2.5 fl oz of good stock with a rounded half teaspoon of powdered gelatine softened in it; the aim is a mousse that holds a piped edge, not a rubber block.
- Oven for the cases"Moderately heated" is an imprecise term in books of this date; for blind-baking these cases something in the region of 350-375F answers. The rice is a blind-baking weight, exactly as it is used now; foil or parchment under it makes it easier to lift out.
- Cheese and heatAdd the Parmesan and Gruyère off direct heat and stir only until melted. Gruyère held over a flame will string and weep fat, and the mousse will set greasy.
- The butter ornamentCreamed butter piped through a rose or leaf tube sets hard in the refrigerator and looks crude at room temperature. Pipe it when the butter is at cool room temperature, then chill; expect it to soften fairly quickly once on the table.
- Assemble lateThe pastry stays crisp for perhaps an hour once filled. Bake the cases ahead, keep them dry, and fill them as close to serving as the piping allows.
- YieldTwelve small barquettes — two per person for six as a savoury, or a plate of canapés for eight to ten with drinks.
The title is odd: "condoles" has been suggested to be a printer's corruption of gondoles, little gondolas, the boat-shaped moulds that French pâtisserie also calls barquettes, though the word appears twice in the text and the emendation remains conjecture. The instruction to "serve after the sweets" places the dish squarely in late-Victorian and Edwardian British dining, where the savoury course came after the pudding and before dessert proper — a sequence that survives now mainly in club and college dining. Cold cheese mousses set with aspic belonged to the same repertoire as chaud-froid and jellied entrées: dishes that depended on a kitchen with reduced stock always to hand and, crucially, on ice, which is why the recipe twice tells the cook to keep the things on it.