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Petites Caisses a la Furnes
Take a small Ostend rabbit, steep it in water as usual, and boil it gently in some white stock, with a good many peppercorns. When it is cold chop the meat up into small dice; add to it about a quarter of the amount of ham, and the whites of two hard-boiled eggs, all cut to the same size. Moisten the salpicon with a good white sauce made with cream, a little lemon juice, pepper and salt. The little paper cases must have a ring of cress arranged, about a quarter of an inch thick; the salpicon, put in carefully with a small spoon, will hold it in place. Fill the cases to the level of the cress leaves, and decorate with a Belgian flag made as follows: Make some aspic jelly with gelatine, tarragon vinegar, and a little sherry. Color one portion with paprika or coralline, pepper; a second part with the sieved yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, and the remainder with rinsed pickled walnuts, also passed through a wire sieve. Pour the red jelly into a small mold with straight sides; when it is almost set pour in the yellow aspic, and when that is cold pour in the black. When the jelly is quite cold, turn it out, slice it, and cut it into pieces of suitable size. If you make too much aspic it can decorate any cold dish or salad. The walnut squash looks black at night.
A cold hors d'oeuvre: diced rabbit bound in cream sauce, served in paper cases and topped with a tricolour of layered aspic. Most of the work is in the garnish, and the garnish is the point.
- The hinge: set each aspic layer before the nextThe hinge: let each aspic layer set before adding the next. The recipe has the yellow poured on when the red is "almost set" and the black when the yellow is "cold." Pour warm jelly onto jelly that has barely begun to set and the colors bleed into one another.
- SalpiconA salpicon is simply a mixture of ingredients cut into uniform small dice and bound with sauce. Uniform is the operative word here, since ham, egg white and rabbit all appear in the same spoonful.
- "A small Ostend rabbit"A small tame rabbit, the name pointing to the Belgian port such rabbits were shipped from; perhaps 2 to 2 1/2 lb dressed. Any whole rabbit from a butcher works; a wild one is leaner and stringier and wants longer cooking. Boneless chicken thigh gives a close texture if rabbit is hard to find.
- "Steep it in water as usual"An hour or two in cold water to draw out blood, a routine step with rabbit and veal in period cookery. Drain and pat dry before it goes into the stock.
- Gently is literalBarely a simmer, 45 to 60 minutes for a farmed rabbit, until the meat pulls from the bone. A rolling boil shreds it and turns the dice woolly. Let it cool in the stock so it stays moist, then pick and dice.
- White stockUnbrowned veal or chicken stock, unsalted or lightly salted, since it reduces around the meat. Reserve some to loosen the cream sauce if the salpicon stiffens in the refrigerator.
- Coralline pepperA Victorian red tinting pepper, sometimes said to have been colored with dried lobster coral, and long gone from shops. Paprika alone does the job the recipe wants, which is red.
- Pickled walnutsStill sold in jars, mainly in Britain. Rinse off the vinegar brine as directed, then push through a sieve; the closing line about looking black at night presumably means the puree reads as true black under lamplight, giving the third stripe of the flag.
- Gelatine quantity is not givenThe original assumes you know your gelatine. For jelly firm enough to unmold and slice cleanly, aim well above dessert strength; a single 1/4 oz envelope of powdered gelatine per cup of liquid is the general range for cut-and-slice aspic. Test a spoonful on a cold saucer before committing all three colors.
- The casesPetites caisses are small fluted paper or foil cups, about 2 inches across, of the kind now sold for baking. The band of cress is packed against the wall of the case and the salpicon spooned in to pin it upright.
- Yield and servingOne rabbit fills roughly eight to ten small cases, enough for a first course for that many. Assemble no more than a couple of hours ahead, keep refrigerated, and serve cold; the cress wilts and the aspic weeps if it stands out at room temperature.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and sold in aid of Belgian relief. Furnes is the French name for Veurne, a small town in West Flanders that in 1914-18 sat in the narrow strip of Belgium never occupied, just behind the flooded Yser front, and which served briefly as the seat of the Belgian army command. That context explains a garnish that would otherwise look merely fussy: a black, yellow and red aspic cut into slices and stood up in each case is the national flag. The technique itself is ordinary Edwardian hotel work sauce made with cream, a diced salpicon of cold cooked meat, paper cases for an entr tee froide turned to patriotic purpose.