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Galantine Stuffing--Another Way
There is, to say the least, nothing better or more satisfactory of its kind than this. For one medium turkey--enough sliced for 25 plates--make 3 pounds of forcemeat of another turkey or of chicken as follows: 2 full-grown fowls boiled tender. 6 ounces of fat salt pork. 6 ounces of butter. 6 ounces of white bread crumbs. 2 raw eggs. 8 hard-boiled eggs. 1/2 pint of broth or stock. 1 lemon. Salt and pepper.
Take the dark meat of the fowls, cut it in very small dice and keep it separate. Take off the white meat, chop fine and then pound it to a sort of paste. Throw in the fat pork minced, the teaspoonful of pepper and salt and the bread crumbs and mix together, and soften the butter and stir in. Mix the two raw eggs with the cup of broth and add the juice of the lemon, and with this mixture moisten the forcemeat. It is now ready for use. Lay the boned turkey out flat and partly slice some of the meat from the thick parts and lap them over the thin, that the galantine may make even-appearing slices and not seem in some parts all stuffing. Season with a teaspoonful of aromatic or spiced salt, if you keep that preparation on hand, otherwise dredge with pepper and salt; then strew over the turkey about half the dark meat mince, and over that spread half the white forcemeat. Take the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs, cut them in quarters and scatter some over the forcemeat, then the rest of the minced dark meat, then the remaining forcemeat and egg yolks.
Bring up the two edges of the boned turkey over this stuffing and sew it securely. Then wrap, boil 3 hours, and press it as already detailed for galantines.
If you use truffles or fresh grown mushrooms (not canned) they come in place in the white chicken forcemeat above instead of the egg yolks. The whites of the eggs look very well in all these galantines and may sometimes be added for variation.
This is the interior of a boned, rolled turkey galantine — a cold buffet centerpiece meant to be sliced thin and served in aspic or with its own jelly. The forcemeat itself is straightforward; the work is in the boning, the tying, and the pressing.
- The hinge: even slicesEverything here serves the cross-section. The dark meat dice, the pale forcemeat and the quartered yolks must be laid in distinct layers, and the thick parts of the turkey shaved off and lapped onto the thin spots, or half your slices will be solid stuffing. Roll and sew tightly so no cavity forms; air pockets collapse under pressing and ruin the pattern.
- Quantities that don't quite line upThe list calls for two boiled fowls to yield 3 pounds of forcemeat, but only the white meat goes into the paste and the dark into the dice, so the actual yield depends on the size of the birds, which the recipe never states. The "teaspoonful of pepper" appears in the method without being listed, and 1/2 pint of broth is the same as the "cup of broth" mentioned later (about 8 fl oz).
- Fat salt porkSix ounces of fat salt pork means salt-cured pork fat without lean streaks, from the back or the fat belly, rinsed of surface salt, not streaky bacon. Unsmoked fatback or fresh pork fat with an extra pinch of salt gives the same result; bacon will smoke-flavour the whole galantine.
- Pounding, and its modern substituteA food processor does the white-meat paste in under a minute. Pulse the cooked breast with the pork fat cold, then add crumbs, softened butter and the egg-broth-lemon mixture. Do not overwork it into glue — it should hold a shape but stay short.
- Aromatic or spiced saltA house seasoning mixture; period versions vary, but commonly salt with white pepper and warm spices such as nutmeg, mace and clove, sometimes with dried herbs, ground fine. Any pâté spice (quatre épices with salt) stands in. The recipe itself calls for about a teaspoonful strewn over the laid-out bird.
- Boning the turkeyThe book assumes you can bone a bird through the back, leaving the skin intact as a wrapper. A butcher will do it on request. Keep the skin unpunctured; it is what holds the roll during the three-hour simmer.
- "Boil 3 hours" means simmerA rolling boil will split the skin and squeeze the forcemeat. Wrap the roll in cheesecloth, tie at intervals, and hold the stock at 175-180F. Three hours suits the medium turkey the recipe specifies; check that the centre of the forcemeat reaches 165F before taking it out.
- Pressing and servingCool the galantine still wrapped, then press under a board and a few pounds of weight in the refrigerator overnight — this is what makes it sliceable. Serve cold, cut about 1/4 inch thick; the recipe reckons 25 plates from one medium turkey.
- MushroomsThe recipe gives no reason for the exclusion; the objection was most likely to flavour and colour rather than safety. If substituting for the yolks, sauté fresh mushrooms dry first and cool them, or their water will loosen the forcemeat.
Galantine — the name is generally traced to Old French, and is often linked to the jelly the dish sets in, though the derivation is not settled — is a cold-kitchen classic: a bird boned, stuffed with its own forcemeat, poached in stock, pressed and served in slices. It belonged to the garde manger, the cold larder station. The American Pastry Cook is aimed squarely at the hotel and restaurant trade, where a single boned turkey serving 25 plates from the cold table was an economy as much as a display piece. The insistence on fresh rather than canned mushrooms is a period tell: commercially canned mushrooms were available by this date, and some professional cooks objected to their colour and taste.