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Birds in Aspic
Clean, bone, stuff, and truss a bird, then steam over body bones or roast. If roasted, do not dredge with flour. Put a pan in ice-water, cover bottom with aspic jelly mixture, and when firm garnish with truffles and egg custard thinly sliced and cut in fancy shapes. The smaller the shapes the more elaborate may be the designs. When garnishing with small shapes, pieces are so difficult to handle that they should be taken on the pointed end of a larding-needle, and placed as desired on jelly. Add aspic mixture by spoonfuls, that designs may not be disturbed. When mixture is added, and firm to the depth of three-fourths inch, place in the bird, breast down. If sides of mould are to be decorated, dip pieces in jelly and they will cling to pan. Add remaining mixture gradually as in Tomatoes in Aspic. Small birds, chicken, capon, or turkey, may be put in aspic.
This is a construction method more than an ingredient list: Farmer assumes you already have her aspic jelly and a cooked bird, and is telling you how to build the mould so the decoration ends up on the outside. A few of her assumptions need translating.
- The hinge: build in thin layersEach addition of aspic must be nearly set before the next goes on, or the inlaid truffle and custard shapes float out of place. Work with the pan sitting in ice water and add the jelly a spoonful at a time, exactly as written — this is the whole technique.
- "Aspic jelly mixture"A separate recipe in the book: a clarified, well-seasoned stock set with gelatin. If you are using powdered gelatin, you will need a distinctly firmer set than for a jelly eaten by the spoonful -- on the order of a full envelope per cup of stock -- because a soft jelly will not hold a whole bird upright when unmoulded. Where possible, follow the proportions given in the book's own aspic recipe.
- "Egg custard" is savouryNot dessert custard. It is unsweetened egg and milk or stock, set firm in a shallow pan, chilled, then sliced thin and cut into shapes for a pale contrast against the dark truffle. The page does not say how to cook it; a gentle water bath in a low oven (around 325F) keeps it smooth enough to cut cleanly.
- Oven and steamingThe page gives no temperature; a moderate oven, say 350 to 375F, suits a small bird. The instruction not to dredge with flour is presumably so the skin stays smooth and the aspic clings. Steaming over the body bones means setting the bird in a steamer above a pan of the bones and water, which can also give you stock for the aspic.
- Capon and "small birds"A capon is a castrated cockerel, rarely sold now; a 4 to 5 lb chicken behaves the same way. "Small birds" in 1896 meant quail, squab, plover and the like — use quail or squab, and check that any wild game bird you intend to use is legal to buy or take where you live.
- Larding needleFine-tipped tweezers or a bamboo skewer with a dab of jelly on the point handles the cut shapes as well as a larding needle, which is a thing few kitchens now own.
- Cook the bird through firstNothing in the mould is heated again, so the bird must reach 165F in the thigh before it is chilled and set. Cool it quickly and keep the finished aspic refrigerated; serve within two days.
- Yield and serviceA boned chicken in aspic will serve roughly six to eight as a cold entree, sliced across the mould so each portion shows the decorated top. Unmould by dipping the pan briefly in warm water and inverting onto a cold platter.
Aspic work of this kind was a showpiece of the late-nineteenth-century cold table, and Fannie Farmer's instructions belong to the French tradition that American cooking schools were teaching at the time: decorated jelly, truffle cut in rounds and crescents, savoury custard standing in for more expensive garnishes. The point was visual -- the mould is built upside down so the design, laid first on the bottom of the pan, becomes the surface the guest sees. Boning and re-trussing the bird so it could be sliced through cleanly was skilled work, and the assumption of a larding needle, a supply of truffles and a spare pan of ice suggests a well-equipped kitchen. Cheap cold storage made the dish practical, and may also have helped end it: once cold food was routine rather than a feat, a jellied bird stopped being impressive.