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Chicken Cutlets in Aspic
Cut off the fillets from two chickens, contise the minions or small fillets with truffles; put them all into a sautepan with a little butter, cover with paper, place a tin with a weight on the top of them to keep it flat, set the pan in the oven and cook without allowing them to take color. Remove to cool thoroughly, cut each large fillet first crosswise in halves and then lengthwise, and trim them in the shape of cutlets. Put into a saucepan one breakfast cupful of bechamel sauce to warm, and dissolve in it one teacupful of aspic jelly and a little chicken glaze; then add two tablespoonfuls of cream, mix well together, pour the mixture into a sieve over a basin packed in ice, stir it well until it thickens and mask all the cutlets with it before it is quite cold. Decorate the cutlets with various designs stamped out in cooked truffles and tongue, and trim the minion fillets. Pour a little of the jelly at the bottom of a mould packed in ice, arrange the minion fillets on it, cover over with a little more of the jelly, then place the cutlet-shaped pieces round the sides of the mould with the plain side inwards, and let them set; fill the mould up with the remainder of the jelly. Turn the jelly out on a dish and serve with a garnish of pieces of colored aspic intermixed with finely-chopped lettuce leaves.
This is a cold chaud-froid worked in a lined mould — a set piece from the Waldorf's garde-manger rather than a dish you improvise. Nearly all the work happens between 40F and room temperature, and the timing of the coating is the whole trick.
- The hinge: coat at the right momentThe bechamel-aspic mixture must be stirred over ice until it thickens to the consistency of heavy cream, then poured over the chilled cutlets at once. Too warm and it runs off; a minute too late and it sets in the bowl and has to be gently rewarmed and cooled again.
- Contise / contiserTo cut shallow slits in the surface of the fillet and inset thin discs or crescents of truffle so they sit flush. "Minions" are the minion fillets — what a modern butcher calls the chicken tenders, the strip lying under each breast.
- Oven heat"Without allowing them to take color" means a low, gentle oven; the book gives no temperature. The pan is covered with paper and weighted so the fillets stay flat. Cook to an internal 165F, then chill thoroughly before slicing; warm chicken tears instead of trimming cleanly.
- Cup measuresA breakfast cupful is roughly 8-10 fl oz, a teacupful nearer 5-6. The proportions are forgiving, but the aspic must be strong enough to set firmly on a vertical mould wall — test a spoonful on a cold plate before committing.
- Aspic jelly and chicken glazeAspic here is clarified chicken stock set with gelatin, not a packet product. Chicken glaze is glace de volaille: stock reduced to a syrup, used for color and depth in a spoonful. Powdered gelatin bloomed in strong stock stands in for the aspic if you are not making it from scratch.
- TongueThe decoration relies on cured, cooked beef tongue for its pink against the black truffle. Pastrami or cooked ham gives a similar color if tongue is not available; the pieces are stamped out with small aspic cutters.
- Lining the mouldWork with the mould sitting in ice water and let each layer set before adding the next, or the cutlets slide. "Plain side inwards" means the decorated face is against the metal, so it shows when the mould is turned out.
- Yield and holdingTwo chickens' worth of breast fillets would suit roughly a 1-1/2 to 2 quart mould and serve perhaps six to eight as a cold entree, though the recipe gives no yield. Because nothing is reheated, keep it refrigerated until service and return leftovers to the cold promptly.
Chaud-froid — literally "hot-cold" — is the nineteenth-century French technique of napping cooked poultry or game with a sauce enriched with aspic so it sets to a smooth opaque coat, then decorating it with cut truffle and tongue. It is the buffet cookery of the grand hotel: labor-intensive, meant to be looked at from a distance across a long table, and eaten cold. Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893, and this recipe belongs to the elaborate cold-table repertoire that a large brigade with a dedicated garde-manger could sustain. Truffles and aspic-lined moulds signaled expense in exactly the way the book's readers were meant to understand; by the 1890s it was standard training for any cook aspiring to a hotel kitchen. It fell out of fashion after mid-century, when buffets grew simpler and the labor behind a moulded chaud-froid stopped being available at any price.