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Chaudfroid of Lark Galantines
Clean and bone the required quantity of larks. Prepare some lark forcemeat, mix in some truffles and stuff each lark with a small piece of the forcemeat. Butter the same quantity of dariole-moulds as there are larks, put one in each mould, breast downward, stand the moulds in a sautepan, pour a little water round them, place the pan in the oven and bake the larks until cooked. Reduce some Spanish sauce with essence of lark. Unmould the larks, wipe and dip them in the sauce, then leave on a dish until it is cold. Trim the same quantity of small minions of chicken as there are larks, contise them with truffles and put them in the oven. Prepare a socle of fried bread cut so as to form three tiers, place it on a hot dish, put the larks in some more of the sauce, arrange them in rows one above the other, place a contised fillet between each lark. and a border of croutons of meat jelly round the dish; garnish with chopped aspic jelly, and serve.
Chaudfroid of Partridges with Truffles Cut the breasts off five or six cold roasted partridges, divide each into three pieces, and trim the skin and pinion bones off. Prepare some chaudfroid sauce with two-thirds of brown sauce and one-third aspic jelly. Dip the pieces of partridge in the sauce, lay them on a dish and leave them till cool. Prepare a wooden stand with steps, mask it with fat, and fix it on a dish, placing on top a small subject cast in fat or stearine. Arrange the side fillets of the breast on the lower step, upright and overlapping, and surround them with a circle of chopped aspic; put the middle pieces of the breast on the upper step. Garnish the base of the stand with some small folded paper cases each filled with a small glazed truffle, and serve.
This is a two-part entry from the professional side of the Waldorf kitchen: a cold buffet showpiece built on songbirds, followed by a partridge chaudfroid in the same style. The first cannot lawfully be made in the United States or most of Europe today, and both belong to a vanished discipline of architectural cold work.
- Larks are protected birdsThe Eurasian skylark and native larks such as the horned lark are listed under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the United States, and larks fall under the EU Birds Directive in Europe, although a few member states still permit limited hunting of skylark under Annex II. There is no ordinary commercial supply, and the trade that supplied Oscar's kitchen no longer exists. If you want a cold chaudfroid of small game, use a current recipe written for a legal bird.
- Essence of larkThe reduced sauce depends on an "essence" made from the lark carcasses and trimmings, so the same restriction applies to the sauce as to the birds. There is no substitute that preserves the recipe as written.
- The partridge half is a different matterFarmed partridge is sold legally and the second recipe is a straightforward cold preparation of already-roasted breasts. The difficulty there is technique and food safety rather than legality: chaudfroid work involves handling cooked meat at room temperature for a long stretch while the sauce sets, which is why modern kitchens do it in stages under refrigeration.
- Chaudfroid sauceLiterally "hot-cold": a sauce made hot, here two parts brown sauce to one part aspic jelly, then used cold as a coating that sets on the meat. Classical practice was to apply it in thin coats, each allowed to firm before the next; this recipe simply dips the pieces and leaves them to set.
- Dariole moulds and minionsA dariole is a small straight-sided tin, roughly ramekin-sized. "Minions" are filets mignons of chicken, the small under-fillets; to "contise" them is to cut shallow slits and inlay slivers of truffle, a decorative technique now rarely seen outside competition work.
- Socle and stearineA socle is a base or plinth for presentation — here fried bread cut in three tiers, in the partridge version a stepped wooden stand masked with fat. Stearine is hardened tallow, used for carved centrepieces that were never intended to be eaten. Neither has any place on a plate today.
- Spanish sauceSauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce built on a dark roux, brown stock and mirepoix. Nineteenth-century English cookbooks translated the name literally.
Chaudfroid belongs to the grand cold buffet of the late nineteenth century, when a hotel kitchen's reputation rested partly on displays that guests admired before anyone ate: glazed birds arranged in tiers, fat-masked plinths, carved stearine figures on top. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, compiled his 1896 book from the working practice of that kitchen, and entries like this one were written for a brigade with a larder man and a garde-manger, not a home cook. Small birds were then ordinary commercial game across Europe — larks, thrushes and ortolans arrived in the markets by the dozen, and their appearance on an American luxury menu was a deliberate borrowing of Continental prestige. The trade contracted sharply in the twentieth century under bird-protection law, which is why a dish that once needed only a poulterer's order is now, for most cooks, effectively out of reach.