Chaudfroid of Turkey

This is buffet work in the grand nineteenth-century manner: a cold dish built up on a decorative pedestal, meant to be looked at from across a room before it is eaten. The cooking is already done; everything here is coating, setting and assembly.

• The hinge: sauce temperatureChaudfroid and aspic both coat properly only in a narrow window — thick enough to cling, fluid enough to run smooth, roughly the consistency of pouring cream. Stir over ice water until it just begins to thicken, coat immediately, and re-warm gently if it sets in the bowl. Too warm and it runs off the fillets in streaks; too cool and it goes lumpy and dull.
• Chaudfroid sauceOscar assumes you know it: a velouté or béchamel enriched with cream and set with strong aspic or dissolved gelatin, so it firms to a matte white coating. A modern working ratio is about 2 cups sauce to 1 cup clarified aspic stock. Strain through a fine chinois before using or the surface will not be smooth.
• Aspic jellyPeriod aspic came from a clarified veal-and-calf's-foot stock. Powdered gelatin at roughly 2 to 2.5 teaspoons per cup of well-flavoured clarified stock gives a jelly firm enough to glaze and to chop for the garnish. It must be crystal clear, which means a proper egg-white raft, not just skimming.
• The pyramid of fatA socle — a pedestal carved from chilled mutton suet, lard or hard butter, sometimes over a base of dried bread — was standard display architecture and was never eaten. Modern kitchens use rice moulded with gelatin, a block of ice, or simply a shallow tiered platter. Nothing is lost from the eating.
• SalpiconA salpicon is meat cut into small, even dice, here bound with mayonnaise. Cut it about a quarter-inch so it packs neatly into hollowed truffles; larger dice will not sit in the cavity.
• Truffles and a substituteWhole cooked black truffles large enough to hollow out are a serious expense today. Large brown mushroom caps, cooked and cooled, or halved and hollowed cooked artichoke bottoms hold the salpicon just as well and read better on a modern plate than a token slice of truffle.
• Pickled tongue and red aspicCured beef tongue, simmered, peeled and pressed, is still sold at good butchers and delicatessens. "Red aspic" is ordinary aspic tinted with tomato purée or beet juice — period kitchens also used cochineal, which is still a permitted food colouring, and early coal-tar dyes, which are not.
• Keeping it coldAll the coating work should happen with the tray going back into the refrigerator between passes, and the finished dish should not sit out more than about two hours. Aspic-glazed cooked poultry at room temperature on a long buffet is the classic way to spoil an otherwise sound dish.
• YieldThe breast of a large turkey gives roughly 16 to 20 thin fillets, enough for eight to ten as a cold course. Allow a full day: poach or roast and chill the bird one day, coat and assemble the next.