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Chaudfroid of Pheasants
Pluck and truss two pheasants, wrap them in buttered paper, and roast them without coloring. When cold cut them up in several pieces, strip off the skin, dip them in chaudfroid sauce, and leave on a dish to set. Arrange some small evenly-cut pieces of the fillets in a border mould; fill it with half-set savory aspic jelly, and when the jelly is quite set turn out the border on a dish. Fix a crouton of fried bread in the center, and pile the pieces of pheasant over it. A few sprigs of parsley may be tucked in here and there to complete the effect.
A cold buffet centerpiece from the era when the dining room judged a kitchen by its aspic work. Nothing here is difficult, but the whole thing lives or dies on temperature control: the sauce and jelly must be caught at the exact moment they are thick enough to cling and still fluid enough to coat.
- The hinge: half-set jellyBoth the chaudfroid sauce and the aspic must be used at the point where they coat the back of a spoon and just begin to hold a line — roughly the consistency of unbeaten egg white. Too warm and everything slides off the bird; too cool and you get lumps and streaks. Keep a bowl of ice water alongside and a bowl of warm water to bring it back if it goes too far.
- Chaudfroid sauceNot spelled out in this entry. A white chaudfroid is a velouté or béchamel enriched with cream and set with gelatin — for a coating quantity, figure about a tablespoon of powdered gelatin bloomed and dissolved per two cups of finished sauce. Strain it through a fine sieve before coating or the surface will not be glassy.
- AspicPeriod cooks clarified their own from calf's foot and veal bones. A strong, well-skimmed chicken or game stock set with about 2 tablespoons gelatin per quart and clarified with an egg-white raft gives the same result. It must be crystal clear or the border mould looks muddy.
- "Roast without coloring"The buttered paper (plain kitchen paper in period practice; parchment today) keeps the skin pale — the pieces are stripped of skin and coated white, so any browning would show through. The book gives no temperature; use a moderate oven and pull the birds before the skin takes color, around 160-165F in the thigh. Farmed pheasant is lean and goes to sawdust past that point.
- Sourcing the birdsFarm-raised pheasants run 2 to 2 1/2 lb dressed and are widely available frozen; they are milder and fatter than the wild birds Oscar's kitchen received. Wild birds may carry shot — check the flesh before coating, since a lead pellet is invisible under white sauce.
- Border mouldA ring mould, savarin mould or plain tube pan. Chill it thoroughly, set a shallow layer of aspic in the bottom, arrange the fillet pieces on that, then fill. Unmould by dipping the outside in warm water for three or four seconds — longer and the edges melt to slush.
- The croutonA fried bread base, cut to a cone or cylinder, exists to give the mound of pheasant height inside the ring. A block of firm bread does the job if you would rather not fry.
- Working coldCoated poultry sitting at room temperature to set is the weak point of all classical chaudfroid work. Chill the pieces between coats and hold the finished dish refrigerated until it goes to the table, then serve within two hours.
- YieldTwo pheasants dressed this way serve 6 to 8 as a cold course. Plan on a full day: roast and cool the birds one day, sauce and mould the next.
Chaud-froid means simply "hot-cold" — a dish cooked hot and served cold under a sauce that sets to a smooth mask. French kitchen lore traces the name to an 18th-century supper at Montmorency where the Maréchal de Luxembourg was called away and returned to find the fricassée congealed and better for it; the story is generally repeated as tradition rather than fact. What is certain is that by the late 19th century chaudfroid had become one of the defining exercises of the garde-manger, the cold-larder department of a grand hotel kitchen, alongside aspics, galantines and decorated hams. Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, published his book in 1896, when hotel dining meant long cold buffets set out for suppers after the opera and at private receptions, and a dish like this earned its place by holding its shape and its shine for an hour on a sideboard. Pheasant carried the additional weight of being game: in that period American hotels bought both wild birds and, increasingly, farm-reared ones, and serving it masked in white sauce on an aspic ring announced that the kitchen had both the bird and the labor to spare.