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Attereaux of Goose's Fat Liver
Take half of a cold cooked fat liver, divide it into half-inch squares, a fifth of an inch thick; put them into a kitchen basin, add an equal quantity of same-sized squares of cooked pickled beef tongue, season, sprinkle over a handful of minced truffles and pour over a few tablespoonfuls of hot villeroy sauce. Roll them in this sauce until they are thoroughly masked in it and then let them cool. Thread the squares of tongue and liver alternately upon some wooden or metal skewers and roll them in breadcrumbs; dip in beaten egg, roll in breadcrumbs again, plunge them into plenty of boiling hog's lard, and fry to a bright brown color. Remove, drain and serve on a folded napkin or ornamental dish-paper with lemons cut into quarters set all round.
A piece of nineteenth-century French garde-manger work: cooked foie gras and tongue bound in a stiff sauce, chilled, skewered, breaded and fried. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how cold and firm the coated squares are before they go into the fat.
- Chill hard before breadingThe Villeroy coating must set solid or the liver will slump and leak into the fat. Spread the sauced squares on a tray and refrigerate at least two hours, ideally until firm to the fingertip, then bread them straight from the cold.
- "Fat liver" is foie grasOscar means a cooked goose liver, the sort sold today as a terrine or torchon. The recipe calls for half a liver, with an equal quantity of tongue; scale to the number of skewers you want rather than working from a fixed count.
- Villeroy sauceA thick allemande or béchamel reduced with mushroom and truffle essence until it coats a spoon heavily and sets to a paste when cold. It is a coating sauce, not a pouring one; if it runs off the squares it needs further reduction.
- Pickled beef tongueCured tongue, simmered until tender, peeled while hot and pressed. Delis still sell it cooked and sliced; ask for a thick-cut piece so you can square it off.
- Hog's lard and temperatureLard is still the best fat for this, but any neutral fat at 360-375F works. The pieces are already cooked, so you are only setting the crust: 60 to 90 seconds to a bright brown, no longer, or the liver renders out.
- SkewersThe recipe allows either wooden or metal. Metal is easier to handle and to keep tidy; trim the skewers so they sit neatly on the plate.
- Season with careBoth the foie gras and the pickled tongue arrive already salted. Season the mixture with pepper and perhaps a little nutmeg or Madeira, and taste the sauce rather than the components.
- Yield and serviceA hot hors d'oeuvre; yield depends on how much liver you start with. Serve immediately; the lemon quarters are not decoration but the acid the dish needs against all that fat.
An attereau is simply food threaded on a small skewer, coated and fried; the word is usually connected with the old French for a small spit or ornamental skewer, though the derivation is traditional rather than settled. The form belongs to the grande cuisine of the nineteenth century, when a hot hors d'oeuvre was expected to look constructed rather than merely cooked. Villeroy sauce, the thick binder that makes the whole thing possible, is by tradition associated with the Villeroy family of the French court, and it appears in Escoffier as the standard means of jacketing something soft so it can be breaded. Oscar Tschirky, who was maitre d'hotel rather than chef at the Waldorf, published his book in 1896 as a record of what a New York luxury hotel kitchen actually turned out, and dishes like this one show how completely that kitchen ran on Parisian technique: foie gras and truffles were imported, the sauces were classical, and the frying was still done in lard.