Home › Entrées › Entrées: Carbonade
Entrées: Carbonade
Carbonade de mouton (see Removes) is dressed as an entrée, cut in slices, and served with Piquante, Poivrade, or other sauce. The slices are also dipped in Maître d'hôtel sauce with cream, and served cold with a salad in the centre, as Carbonade de mouton à la Fermière.
Escalopes, or Filets, de mouton à l'Indienne are slices of mutton in a curry sauce; served with rice. à la Normahal are served with savoury tomato rice and a spiced tomato sauce. à l'Américaine are served with stuffed tomatoes; à la Bourgeoise, with brown gherkin sauce ; à la Czarina, with Czarina sauce. à la Galloise are served on croûtes of fried bread, with a ragoût of mushrooms and olives in the centre, and brown sauce.
A short page, and the most useful thing on it is the first line: the carbonade from the Removes chapter comes back here, sliced, as an entrée. This is the book showing one joint feeding two dinners.
- An entrée was not a main courseIn this book’s running order an entrée is a made dish served before the roast, not the centre of the meal. Portions are small, the sauce does the work, and almost everything on this page is already-cooked meat re-dressed.
- Mutton, not lambEvery dish here is mouton, meat from a grown sheep: firm, strong, and sold in very few places now. The heavy peppery sauces on this page were built to stand against a flavour that lamb does not give.
- The sauces are the recipePiquante, Poivrade, Czarina, brown gherkin sauce: the page assumes you own the sauce chapter and keep a stockpot. Without those behind it, none of these entries is makeable, and that is the real reason the book reads as a list.
- Indienne meant curry powderCurry in a book like this is commercial curry powder stirred into a flour-thickened sauce, with plain boiled rice beside it. It is a flavour inside the French repertoire, which is why it sits between Bourgeoise and Czarina without a word of explanation.
- A cold entrée is still an entréeÀ la Fermière is the same mutton, dipped in a cream sauce and served cold with salad heaped in the middle of the dish. Cold made dishes had a fixed place in the order of a dinner. They were not a compromise.
- Fried bread is structuralWhere a dish sits on croûtes, the bread is holding a small portion up above the dish and soaking the sauce from below. Leave it out and the plate looks mean, which was the thing to avoid.
The cross-reference in the first sentence — see Removes — is how the whole book is built, and it explains the architecture of the dinner it serves. A hostess planning a meal did not look for a dish; she opened the Soups chapter and chose one, then Fish, then Entrées, then Removes, and so on down the courses. The book is a set of columns to be read sideways. That is also why the same animal appears in three chapters under three names: a joint arrives as a Remove, is carved at the table, goes back to the kitchen half-eaten, and is waiting here the next day in slices under a different French label. The economy is not hidden. It is the organising principle, and the book’s job is to make sure nobody at the table has to notice it.