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Entrées: Chaudfroid
For Chaudfroid de côtelettes à l'aspic they are spread with forcemeat in a mound, coated with brown sauce, and served cold on a border of the forcemeat, garnished with aspic.
Chaudfroid de côtelettes à la Fermière-coated with Maître d'hôtel sauce with cream, and served cold, dressed in a crown with a salad in the centre. If coated with brown sauce, they are called à la Russe; or with sauces of two or three different colours, à la Pompadour.
Côtelettes à la Prince de Galles are pieces of stewed breast of mutton, breadcrumbed and fried; served with a purée of turnips, and gravy.
Epigrammes de mouton à la Smyrne are cutlets from a boned breast of mutton, half of them sauté, and half breadcrumbed and fried; served in a sharp white sauce with raisins and pickled onions.
Ragoût de mouton à l'Irlandaise is Irish stew.
Haricot de mouton is haricot mutton. It is now often called Navarin de mouton. À l'Allemande, it is served in a sharp brown sauce with currant jelly and prunes.
Mutton, in a chapter of small made dishes. The first half of the page is cold work finished with set sauce; the second half is two of the plainest stews in English cooking, given French names.
- ChaudfroidThe word is literally hot-cold: a sauce made hot in the ordinary way, strengthened with gelatine, poured over cold cooked meat and left to set to a smooth coat. It is a cold dish that cannot be made without the hot kitchen, and it has no household equivalent now.
- AspicAspic here is savoury jelly from the stockpot, clarified and set by the bones themselves. Leaf or powdered gelatine in a good stock does the same job, and the book uses it as a garnish and as an edible mortar for building things up in a mould.
- Four names, one cutletThe same cutlet becomes à l’aspic, à la Fermière, à la Russe or à la Pompadour depending only on the colour of the coating sauce. The dish is being named by its appearance, which tells you it was looked at before it was eaten.
- Breast of muttonBoth the Prince de Galles cutlets and the Epigrammes start from a boned breast, which is the cheap end. Mutton itself is now hard to buy outside a halal butcher; lamb breast is the nearest cut, fattier and smaller, and still sold for very little.
- Haricot de moutonNo beans in it. The page notes that the name was being replaced by navarin even as it was written, which is a useful warning: the French on these cards was a living language, and a dish name could mean two things within a decade.
An entrée in this scheme is not the main course. It is one of the small made dishes served between the fish and the roast, which is why the chapter runs to cutlets, patties, quenelles and slices rather than joints, and why a page about mutton can be half cold food. The two English stews at the foot show the book’s method at its plainest: Irish stew is listed as Ragoût de mouton à l’Irlandaise and haricot mutton as Haricot de mouton, because what is wanted is not a different dish but a line that can be written on a card in French. The à l’Allemande variant, with currant jelly and prunes in a sharp brown sauce, is the same stew again carrying the sweet-sour note that English cooking had not yet given up.