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SALMI OF GAME (This can be made from remains)
This can be made from remains of roasted game, but to have it in perfection the birds should be only half roasted. Carve them very neatly and remove every bit of skin and fat from the legs, wings and breasts; bruise the bodies well and put them with the skin and trimmings into a stewpan, add two sliced onions, one bay leaf, one small blade of mace and a few peppercorns. Pour over these ingredients a full pint of veal gravy, broth or stock and boil sharply until reduced almost half; now strain the gravy, skim off the fat, add a little cayenne and lemon juice and in it heat very gradually, but do not boil, the game. Border a dish with fried bread, put the birds in the center, boil the gravy up once and pour over the birds.
RISSOLES-These are practically little turnovers, filled with a highly seasoned mixture of chopped chicken and ham, moistened with white sauce. Roll puff paste very thin and cut in circles. Place a teaspoon of the mixture in the center of each circle, moisten half the circumference with cold water, and fold the other half over, pressing the edges closely together. Dip in slightly beaten egg mixed with a tablespoon of water, which produces the desired glazed effect. Fry in deep fat and drain thoroughly.
Two preparations are run together here, both belonging to the thrifty end of a large kitchen: a salmi built from the carcasses of game birds, and rissoles from chopped cooked meat. The salmi is a sauce recipe first and a meat dish second.
- The hinge: never boil the birds in the sauceThe carved joints are warmed in the strained gravy off a full boil, which keeps lean game from seizing and drying. Only the finished sauce is boiled up, after the meat has been lifted onto the dish.
- But do bring the meat up to temperatureThis recipe half-roasts the birds and then finishes them gently, which works only if the joints actually get hot through. Hold the gravy at a bare simmer, around 180-190F, until the thickest piece reads 165F on an instant-read thermometer; that is well below boiling and does no harm to the texture.
- Blade of maceA blade is a single dried section of the lacy covering of the nutmeg, not ground mace. Substitute a scant 1/8 teaspoon ground mace, added at the start with the onions so it has something to infuse.
- Veal gravy, broth or stockA pint is 16 fl oz. Veal stock is the intended base and gives the body the sauce needs; unsalted chicken stock reinforced with the bruised carcasses is a workable stand-in. Reduce to about 1 cup, then strain and skim.
- Bruise the bodies wellThe point of chopping and crushing the carcasses, skin and trimmings is extraction: more surface, more gelatin and roasted flavor into a small quantity of liquid. A heavy knife or cleaver, not a food processor.
- Border of fried breadCrustless bread cut into triangles or fingers and fried in butter or clarified butter until crisp, arranged around the rim. It exists to soak up sauce and should be fried at the last minute or it goes limp.
- YieldThe recipe does not say how many birds it expects; a pint of stock reduced by half would sauce perhaps two to four small birds, so roughly two to four servings. Season the reduced sauce at the end, since reduction concentrates whatever salt was in the stock.
- RissolesPuff paste rolled thin and cut in rounds (the recipe gives no size; about 3 inches works), one teaspoon of filling each, edges sealed firmly or they burst in the fat. Fry at 365-375F for two to three minutes until puffed and deep gold; the egg wash browns them but will not hold a badly sealed seam.
- Wild game caveatIf the birds were shot rather than farmed, check the flesh for pellets before carving and discard any bruised, blood-shot meat; that trimming is also where an off, gamy flavor concentrates.
Salmi is an anglicization of the French salmis, a dish of partly roasted game finished in a sauce made from its own carcass and trimmings; the word is generally traced to salmigondis, the same root that gave English salmagundi, a term for a highly seasoned mixture. In nineteenth-century French and English service the salmi was a made dish of some prestige, sometimes finished at table in a chafing dish, and the classic version leans on a game-based stock reduced hard so that nothing of the bird is wasted. Its appearance in the Butterick book, headed "this can be made from remains," shows how such restaurant forms were repitched for the American household cook: the same technique, offered as a way to use up yesterday's roast rather than as a showpiece. The rissoles that follow belong to the same economy of leftovers.