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Entrées: Boudins
Boudins de volaille à la Lucullus are quenelles of chicken forcemeat with a piece of purée of truffles in the centre of each; served in a croustade, or shape of fried bread, with Allemande sauce. Boudins de volaille à la Richelieu are oblong pieces 16 of quenelle forcemeat, dressed in a crown with Périgueux sauce.
Cigarettes à la Reine are made of chicken forcemeat with white sauce and chopped truffles; pieces the shape of cigars, breadcrumbed and fried.
Rissolettes de volaille à la Pompadour are diamondshaped sandwiches of the preparation for chicken croquettes with truffles, between layers of chicken forcemeat; dipped in batter and fried.
ENTRÉES.
Timbales à la Pahlen are small moulds lined with macaroni, filled with a white forcemeat-veal or fowl and a black forcemeat of truffles, etc., in the centre.
Ravioles à la Napolitaine are little pieces of chicken or game forcemeat wrapped in paste; arranged in a circle with alternate slices of Parmesan cheese; baked, and served with brown sauce.
Croustades de beurre à la Duc de York are little croustades of butter, thickly breadcrumbed and fried; the butter removed, and the cases filled with a purée of fowl with dice of stewed cucumber; served with plovers' eggs on the top.
A boudin here is not a blood sausage. The word is used for a shape, a sausage or oblong of poached forcemeat, and almost every dish on the page is the same chicken forcemeat under a different name.
- Forcemeat is the whole pageQuenelle forcemeat is raw chicken breast worked to a paste with egg white and cream and poached in moulded or spoon-shaped pieces. It was made in a mortar and pushed through a sieve. A food processor does it in a minute; the thing to watch is temperature, because the paste separates if the meat and cream are not cold.
- Croustade means a caseA croustade here is a shape of fried bread hollowed to hold a dish. Croustades de beurre à la Duc de York go further: the case is moulded from butter, thickly crumbed, fried so the crumb sets, and the butter melts away, leaving a hollow shell. It depends on working fast in a cold room.
- Plovers’ eggs cannot be boughtThe plovers’ eggs set on top of that dish are not available. The birds are protected in Britain and taking their eggs is illegal. Quail eggs are what occupies that position on a menu now.
- The sauce does the namingAllemande is given in this book’s own glossary as a thicker velouté; in classical practice it is velouté finished with egg yolk. Périgueux is a brown sauce with truffle. Change the sauce and the dish changes name while the forcemeat stays identical, so cooking from this page means choosing a sauce rather than a recipe.
- Ravioli as a meat dishRavioles à la Napolitaine are forcemeat wrapped in paste, ringed with alternate slices of Parmesan, baked, and served with brown sauce. That is ravioli treated as meat cookery, with a meat gravy and no tomato anywhere on the plate.
The entrée was a position in the meal rather than a kind of food: a small made dish that came between the fish and the roast, served in numbers and chosen for variety. That is why one bowl of chicken paste can furnish seven dishes here. The names, Lucullus and Richelieu and Pompadour and Duc de York, carry no information about the food at all, and this book’s own preface complains about precisely that habit, calling such dishes sports thrown off from well-established originals and arguing that a fanciful name misleads where a menu is meant to inform. The household using this page wanted its dinner to read as French. The kitchen knew it was making chicken.