Chipolata Garnish

This is a classical French garniture rather than a dish in itself: four components cooked separately, arranged around a roast, and coated with a Madeira sauce. The instruction that matters is that each element is cooked its own way and only combined at the last moment, or the mushrooms grey and the sausages weep fat into everything.

• What it is forGarniture chipolata accompanies a roast or braise — turkey, capon, guinea fowl, veal, or game birds. The entry implies a large joint on a platter with the garnish banked around it, though it does not say so. The recipe gives no quantities; as a modern working guide, for a bird serving eight figure about 24 chestnuts, 24 small onions, 8 oz mushrooms and 16 cocktail-size sausages.
• "Mask"To mask is to coat with sauce so the components are veiled but still visible, not to submerge them. Spoon the Madeira sauce over the garnish at the table-ready moment; sauce sitting on the sausages will dull them.
• Chestnuts"Blanch" here means loosening and removing both the shell and the inner brown skin — score the flat side, boil two or three minutes, and peel while hot. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts are a legitimate shortcut; they only need 10 minutes warming in the broth. Fresh ones need 20 to 30 minutes in simmering stock and must be handled gently or they collapse.
• Glazed onionsUse peeled pearl or small pickling onions. Cook them covered in butter, a pinch of sugar and enough stock to come halfway, about 20 minutes, then uncover and roll them in the reduced syrup until shining brown. Brown glazing (glaçage à brun) suits this garnish, though the recipe says only "glaze" and white glazing is also possible.
• Mushrooms in butter and lemon juiceThis is cooking à blanc: small button mushrooms, butter, a squeeze of lemon and a little water, covered, five to six minutes. The lemon keeps them pale, which is the point in a garnish that is meant to look composed. Do not brown them.
• Chipolata sausagesA chipolata is a thin fresh pork sausage in a narrow sheep casing, coarsely seasoned and usually unsmoked. Cocktail-size fresh pork sausages are the nearest supermarket equivalent; Italian sausage is too heavily fennelled. Poach or gently pan-cook them to 160F internal, then brown briefly — high heat from the start splits the casings.
• Madeira sauceClassically this is a demi-glace finished with Madeira; the entry itself gives no method. Reduce a good veal or brown chicken stock to a light syrup, add 2 to 3 tablespoons of Sercial or Verdelho Madeira per cup off the heat, and do not boil it hard afterwards or the wine's aroma goes. Sweet Madeira will make the garnish cloying alongside the glazed onions.
• "Rich broth"A concentrated brown stock, not water with a cube. The chestnuts absorb what they are cooked in, so this liquid is doing most of the seasoning work for that component.