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White Galantine
CHICKEN A LA BELLEVUE.
Fill a boned turkey or chicken with white chicken forcemeat of the kind last directed for turkey. If wished to be thoroughly white substitute for the egg yolks and dark meat some of the whites of eggs minced, add a few blanched almonds and pistachio nuts, a pinch of ground mace, white pepper and the juice of another lemon. Do the galantine up in roundish or cushion shape, and press after boiling between two dishes.
To coat it over for ornament make three pints of white jelly, with thin cream and two ounces of gelatine, precisely like blanc-mange, but seasoned with salt and a handful of parsley scalded in it instead of sugar. The cream will curdle if allowed to quite boil with the gelatine in it. Strain the white jelly, stir it in a pan set in ice-water, and when it is just about to set pour it evenly over the galantine, which should be in the refridgerator and very cold. While it is setting firm prepare a sheet of white of egg custard as directed for the pyramid of boned turkeys, and stamp out a number of leaf and flower shapes. Lift the galantine on to its dish and decorate the smooth white surface and also the edge of the dish. A cord of the white jelly chopped and forced through a lady finger tube may be placed as a border on the dish to carry a wreath of artificial leaves, etc.
This is a cold chaud-froid: a boned, stuffed bird poached, pressed, chilled, then masked in a set cream jelly and decorated. Everything depends on temperature control at the coating stage.
- The hinge: never let the cream boilDissolve the gelatine in a little water or stock first, then add it to warm cream off the heat. Bringing cream to a boil with gelatine in it will curdle the mixture and you cannot strain the graininess back out.
- Coat at the right momentHold the strained jelly over ice-water, stirring, until it thickens to the consistency of heavy cream and just begins to cling to the spoon. Poured too warm it runs off; poured too cool it sets in ridges. The galantine must be refrigerator-cold and its surface dry, or the coating will slide.
- Gelatine strength has changedGelatine strength may have changed -- Two ounces to three pints was measured against 19th-century sheet or shred gelatine, which was less standardised than modern products, so the set is hard to predict. Modern powdered gelatine is usually around 225 bloom; you may well need less than two ounces. Test a spoonful on a cold plate before committing the whole batch.
- Forcemeat, without the shortcutsForcemeat -- The 'white chicken forcemeat' is the one given earlier in the book for turkey, so follow it there; such forcemeats are typically pale breast meat pounded with cream and egg white. For the pure white version here the yolks and dark meat are replaced by minced egg white, with blanched almonds and pistachios added.
- Poaching and donenessWrap the shaped galantine firmly in cheesecloth and tie it, then poach in seasoned stock at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, which splits the skin and forces the forcemeat out. Cook to 165F at the centre; a 5 lb boned chicken takes roughly 1.5 hours, a small turkey longer.
- Pressing'Press after boiling between two dishes' is best read as pressing while still warm and in its cloth, under a weight, and chilling it there. This is what gives the cushion shape and a forcemeat firm enough to slice cleanly.
- The egg-white custard sheetA thin set sheet of seasoned egg whites made as directed elsewhere in the book, cooled and stamped into leaves and petals. Truffle, blanched leek green and cooked carrot are the usual companions if you want colour against the white.
- Artificial leavesThe wreath of artificial foliage was standard Victorian buffet dressing. It is not food; keep it on the dish rim, well clear of anything to be eaten, or leave it off.
- Yield and serviceA boned chicken galantine will serve a cold course for roughly a dozen depending on size, a turkey considerably more. Slice with a thin knife wiped between cuts so the coating does not smear, and serve within a day of glazing.
Galantine is old French kitchen vocabulary, generally traced to galine, an early form of the word for hen, and by the 18th century it meant a boned bird reshaped around its own forcemeat and served cold. The white masking sauce here is a chaud-froid, a technique of the grande cuisine associated with Carême and his successors and inherited by American hotel and catering kitchens; "à la Bellevue" was one of the stock menu names for a cold dish presented under jelly. The cross-references to decorative set pieces such as the "pyramid of boned turkeys" suggest a book aimed at the decorative and cold-larder side of a large kitchen, where the moulds, gelatine, piping tubes and ice were kept. The reference to a "refridgerator" means an insulated ice chest, and the ice-water bath is doing the real work of setting the jelly.