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Bayard Garnish
This is made up of truffle, tongue, mushrooms, artichokes, Madeira, Spanish sauce, bread and goose's fat liver, prepared as follows: Cut a truffle into very thin round slices, also a little cooked smoked beef tongue, three mushrooms and two artichoke bottoms. Put them all in a saucepan on the fire with half a wineglassful of Madeira, boil for about five minutes or until reduced to one-half its original bulk; add a breakfast cupful of Spanish sauce and cook for a quarter of an hour longer. Surround the dish with croutons of bread covered with slices of cooked goose's fat liver.
This is a classical garniture rather than a dish in itself: a Madeira-and-espagnole ragout of truffle, tongue, mushroom and artichoke, spooned around a roast or a sauté and ringed with foie gras croutons. Everything depends on the sauce base, so make or buy that first.
- Spanish sauceEspagnole — brown veal stock thickened with a dark roux and flavoured with mirepoix and tomato. A well-reduced brown veal or beef stock, lightly bound, stands in for it; a thin packet gravy does not, since the garnish has no other body.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup runs larger than a teacup, roughly 8 to 10 fl oz. Take it as a generous cup of sauce; the recipe gives no yield.
- Half a wineglassfulA wineglass in this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so this is roughly 1 fl oz of Madeira educed to a glaze that perfumes the sauce rather than to make a wine sauce. Use a dry Sercial or Verdelho, not a sweet cooking Madeira.
- The reduction is the hingeBoiling the garnish elements in the Madeira until reduced by half draws their liquid out and concentrates it before the sauce goes in. Skip it and the espagnole thins and tastes raw of wine.
- Artichoke bottomsWhole cooked bottoms, not marinated hearts from a jar, which are too acidic here. Good-quality canned or frozen bottoms work; drain and rinse them well.
- TongueCooked smoked beef tongue, sold at delicatessen counters and by mail order. Trim the skin, and cut it into rounds or fine julienne to match the truffle slices.
- Goose's fat liverFoie gras. Sliced cooked terrine or a torchon can be laid on the croutons; the sale of it is restricted in some jurisdictions. Duck foie gras substitutes directly, and a coarse chicken liver parfait is the workmanlike alternative.
- Quarter of an hour with the sauceFifteen minutes is fine for a stock-based sauce, which only improves, but keep it at a bare simmer. Add the truffle in the last few minutes if it is fresh rather than preserved, since prolonged heat flattens its aroma.
- ServingEnough to surround a roast or sauté; the recipe names no main dish and gives no number served. The croutons go on at the last moment or they soften.
Named garnishes were the shorthand of the classical French kitchen: a cook told to send out tournedos Bayard was expected to know the whole assembly without further instruction, and Oscar Tschirky's cook book of 1896 set out many such formulas in print for American kitchens. The name is generally traced to Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, the French knight sans peur et sans reproche, one of many soldiers, singers and statesmen commemorated in garniture names during the nineteenth century; the connection is honorific rather than culinary. The combination itself — truffle, tongue, mushroom, artichoke bottom, Madeira, espagnole, foie gras on a crouton — is a fair inventory of what a grand hotel larder of the 1890s considered luxurious.