Home › Entrées › Entrées: Cuisses
Entrées: Cuisses
Legs of fowls are also boned, stuffed with forcemeat, and served as Cuisses de volaille, or poulardes, à la jardinière, with a Jardinière garnish; aux concombres, or aux petits pois, with dressed cucumber or peas. As Ballotine de volaille à la Russe, the stuffed legs are cut in slices, and served with alternate slices of tomato, and a vegetable garnish in the centre.
Cuisses de volaille au soleil are stuffed with forcemeat, larded in rays, braised, and served on a pyramid of forcemeat, with mushroom sauce. à l'écaillère are stuffed with forcemeat and oysters, and dressed on a pyramid of forcemeat, with oyster sauce. ENTRÉES.
Cuisses de volaille truffées à la Périgord-stuffed with truffles and Maître d'hôtel butter; served with paper frills round the bones, and with truffle sauce. à la Bayonnaise the thigh-bone removed, they are cooked in oil with onions, and served in a white sauce, sprinkled with breadcrumbs and browned. farcies aux petits légumes are stuffed and braised; dressed on a border, with carrots and turnips cut in shapes, and brown sauce.
Chaudfroid de volaille. Cooked fowls cut in pieces, coated with white sauce and aspic, and served cold, dressed in a circle with alternate slices of tongue. À la Marie, the pieces are coated with a curry sauce, and served with rice and stuffed olives. En Mayonnaise, they are coated with Béchamel sauce, and served on a salad with Mayonnaise sauce, or with aspic whisked to a froth with Tarragon vinegar and oil.
Mayonnaise de volaille. Pieces of fowl served on a salad, covered with Mayonnaise sauce, and garnished with olives, anchovies, etc.
Salade de volaille à la Carlton. Pieces masked with Mayonnaise sauce with chopped ham, capers, etc.; served with a vegetable mayonnaise, garnished with strips of cucumber and beetroot.
Chaudfroid de fricassée is a fowl cut up and coated with a white sauce; served cold, garnished with aspic.
Capolitade de volaille. Pieces of fowls served in Italian sauce with capers, or in brown sauce with wine, garnished with croûtons of fried bread.
Chartreuse de volaille is an ornamental mould of mixed vegetables, with pieces of chicken in the centre.
Crème de volaille. A purée of fowl with cream, steamed in a mould decorated with truffles, tongue, etc.
Petits soufflés de volaille are made of a purée of fowl and beaten eggs, baked in little soufflé cases, or steamed.
Soufflé glacé de volaille. Minced chicken soaked in oil, vinegar, etc.; put into a soufflé dish in alternate layers with aspic whipped to a froth, and iced.
Aspic à la Royale is prepared with small round slices of fowl, slices of truffle, mushrooms and cocks' combs, with Béchamel sauce and aspic; cut into oval pieces and dressed in a mould of aspic, ornamented with hard-boiled white of egg and truffles.
Vol-au-vent de volaille aux huîtres is a vol-au-vent filled with shreds of chicken in white sauce with oysters.
Cuisse is the thigh. The page is about what to do with the legs of a bird once the breast has gone elsewhere, and then about serving fowl cold — two habits a modern kitchen has largely dropped.
- Boning the leg is the skillEvery dish here begins with a boned leg stuffed with forcemeat. Cut along the inside of the bone, scrape it free, and the leg becomes a pocket. Butchers sell boned thighs, which removes the only difficult step, and ballotine is still the word for the rolled result.
- Chaudfroid is a lost techniqueCold cooked fowl is coated with white sauce mixed with aspic, which sets to an opaque jacket that can then be decorated. It has to be used at the exact point where it will cling to a cold surface instead of sliding off it, and it needs a cold larder to hold afterwards. Nothing in a domestic kitchen now does this.
- Aspic meant stockThe aspic in these dishes is reduced veal or chicken stock carrying enough natural gelatine to set firm. Powdered gelatine in a well-made stock will get you there, but the flavour the book expects comes from the stock and not from the setting agent.
- Whisked aspic as a garnishTwice the page asks for aspic whipped to a froth, once with tarragon vinegar and oil. Half-set jelly beaten to a foam holds air and sits on the plate like snow. It collapses as it warms, which is exactly why it belonged to a cold course served from a sideboard.
- Cocks’ combsAspic à la Royale is garnished with cocks’ combs alongside truffle and mushroom. They were blanched, peeled and poached, and used for texture. No butcher sells them, so the dish loses a component with no substitute.
- The garnishes are knife workCarrots and turnips cut in shapes, strips of cucumber and beetroot, slices of tomato laid alternately with slices of meat. The decoration on this page is geometric and was produced by hand with a knife and a column cutter. The labour is in the cutting, not the cooking.
Read the page in order and it describes the afterlife of a roast dinner. The legs come off and are boned and stuffed; the cooked bird is cut up, coated and set in jelly; the last of it is masked with mayonnaise and buried in salad. Chaudfroid, mayonnaise de volaille, salade de volaille, capolitade, chartreuse: these are the second and third appearances of one fowl, dressed up as dishes in their own right and given French names so that nobody at the table had to recognise yesterday’s chicken. The kitchen that produced them had a cold larder, a standing supply of aspic, and somebody with time to decorate.