Slices of Bread
Half pint of Aspic Jelly.
Remove the fillets of a large fowl, taking off the skin and sinews; boil them in a sauté-pan with a little fresh butter, let them get cold, and cut them up finely. Pound the rest of the meat in a mortar, with about one-third its quantity of foie-gras, add a little cream and the yolk of one egg. Season with some aromatic spice, and pound until the whole is fine enough to pass through a fine sieve.
Butter well six to eight dariole moulds, line them with this farce, place a spoonful of chicken and ham salpicon mixed with minced truffles in the centre; fill up and cover with the remainder of the farce, and place them in a sauté-pan two-thirds filled with boiling water. Cover this with a buttered paper, and finish them in the oven. They will take from fifteen to twenty minutes to cook.
When done, turn out on a baking-sheet, and set them on the ice to cool. Mask them with a thin white chaudfroid sauce. Cut out some fancy shapes of bread of convenient size to hold the darioles. Mask them with a coating of butter, and dress them on a round dish; place one a little larger in the centre of the dish, and put the others round. Ornament the darioles with thin strips and points of black truffles, and finish with a coating of aspic jelly. Dish them on the shapes of bread. Keep cool until required.
A cold chicken-and-foie-gras forcemeat baked in small moulds, glazed, and served on buttered bread plinths. It is a set piece from the era of the cold buffet, and most of the work is in the timing of the chilling stages rather than the cooking.
- The hinge: cook gently, chill hardThe darioles are baked in a water bath so the farce sets without curdling; if the water is allowed to boil the egg and cream will break and weep. Keep the bath at a bare shiver, and once turned out chill the moulds thoroughly before attempting to coat them, or the chaudfroid will slide straight off.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given because the book assumes a range oven judged by hand. A water bath of this kind wants a moderate oven, 325-350F, with the water two-thirds up the moulds. Fifteen to twenty minutes is right for small darioles; the centre should read 165F.
- Half pint of aspicAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. That should be enough to glaze six to eight small moulds, with a little left over.
- Dariole mouldsSmall straight-sided metal moulds of roughly 3 fl oz. Deep timbale moulds, popover tins or 3 oz metal dariole cups all work.
- Farce, salpicon, maskingFarce is the pounded forcemeat lining. A salpicon is a mixture cut in small even dice, here chicken and ham with minced truffle. To mask is to coat completely and smoothly.
- Aromatic spiceThis probably means the period's spice parisienne or quatre epices: a blend of white pepper with nutmeg, clove and ginger or cinnamon. A pinch is enough; the point is warmth behind the foie gras, not a spiced flavour.
- Chaudfroid sauceA white chaudfroid is a velouté or béchamel enriched with cream and set with dissolved aspic, used at the point where it coats a spoon but has not begun to gel. If it thickens too far, warm it back a few degrees rather than thinning it with liquid.
- Set them on the iceThe Victorian larder used an ice chest; read this as the refrigerator throughout, including the final "keep cool until required." These are cooked custards handled repeatedly at room temperature, so return them to the cold between the glazing stages and do not leave them out on the buffet for more than a couple of hours.
- Foie gras and the mortarA food processor will do in moments what the mortar did by hand, but pass the farce through a fine sieve afterwards as instructed; that step is what gives the finished mould its texture. Good chicken liver parfait or a fine pork liver pâté stands in for the foie gras if need be.
- YieldSix to eight darioles, one per person as a cold entrée. The bread shapes are simply buttered, not fried, and serve as stands to lift the moulds off the dish.
This belongs to the grand cold-buffet repertoire that English professional cookery took wholesale from France in the second half of the nineteenth century: forcemeat moulded in darioles, coated in chaudfroid, studded with truffle and sealed under aspic, then raised on cut shapes of bread so that each piece stands clear on the dish. The technique descends from the decorative cold work generally traced to Carême and codified later by Escoffier and his contemporaries, and it was the sort of thing a private household cook was expected to produce for a ball supper or a shooting luncheon. The bread plinths are the giveaway that the book is written for professional presentation rather than the family table — they seem to have served chiefly as a mechanism for height and separation. Note, too, the title: "Slices of Bread."