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Asparagus Croustade
Carefully cut off a small piece of the end of three French rolls, and scrape out all the crumb with the handle of a spoon; put the tops and shells into a fryingpan with a little butter and fry them, or they may be placed before the fire to get crisp. Pour one breakfastcupful of cream into a saucepan, add the yolks of five eggs, and beat together for a few minutes, seasoning with a little salt and grated nutmeg. Set the saucepan on the fire and when the mixture begins to thicken, put in about seventy green parts of the asparagus, cut up into small pieces. Fill the rolls with this mixture, replace the lids or pieces of the tops that were cut off, and with a sharp-pointed stick or skewer make sufficient holes at one end of them to insert about ten more of the green parts of the asparagus. Then arrange them on a napkin placed on a dish, and serve. The pieces of asparagus projecting from the rolls will give the appearance of growing out of them.
Asparagus, Pompadour After washing, place the asparagus in a saucepan of salted boiling water, and boil until done. Take them out, cut them into lengths of about two inches, and place in a cloth near the fire to dry. Prepare a little sauce with vinegar, butter, yolk of egg, salt and pepper and place the asparagus on a dish, pour over the sauce, and serve.
Two asparagus dishes run together in the original text: a custard-filled roll and a simply dressed boiled asparagus. Both assume a cook who already knows how to handle a stirred custard, and the whole success of the croustade rests on that.
- The hinge: do not let the custard boilCream and five yolks over direct heat will scramble the moment they pass about 185F. Stir constantly over low heat, or set the pan over simmering water, and pull it as soon as it coats the spoon.
- BreakfastcupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, generally taken as 8 to 10 fl oz. With five yolks, one cup of cream gives a thick, spoonable custard; if you want it looser, err upward.
- French rollsCrusty individual rolls of the petit pain type, not soft dinner rolls, which collapse once hollowed. Cut the end off, hollow the crumb, and keep the plug as the lid.
- Crisping the shells"Placed before the fire" means a dry radiant heat that firms the crust without colouring it much. The book gives no oven setting; a moderate oven for a few minutes is the nearest modern stand-in. Frying in butter is richer and browns faster, so watch it.
- "Seventy green parts"Oscar is counting asparagus tips rather than measuring volume; seventy tips is roughly three bunches' worth, depending on thickness. The text is ambiguous about whether the "ten more" for decoration is per roll or in total. Cut the tips to a uniform length so they stand straight.
- The asparagus must be cooked firstNothing in this recipe boils it, though the Pompadour recipe alongside does; the step is simply assumed. Boil or steam the tips until just tender, drain well and dry them, or they will thin the custard.
- YieldThree rolls, three servings, as a first course or a light supper dish. Assemble and serve at once -- the custard soaks the shell within minutes.
- The Pompadour sauceVinegar, butter, yolk, salt and pepper whisked warm is a small hollandaise-type emulsion. Keep it off direct heat and under 160F while whisking, and pour it over asparagus that has been thoroughly dried, or the sauce will break on the plate.
Croustade simply means a crust used as a container -- a hollowed roll, a fried bread case, a pastry shell -- and the technique was standard in nineteenth-century service, where a sauce or ragout needed something to sit in. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893 and whose Cook Book appeared in 1896, collected dozens of these dressed-up vegetable courses; asparagus in particular was an expensive, strictly seasonal luxury in American cities before refrigerated rail freight became routine, which is why a hotel would go to the trouble of making it look like it was still growing. The name of the second dish follows the old kitchen habit of attaching aristocratic names to garnishes and sauces -- Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, lent hers to a scatter of preparations with no documented link to her table.