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Durand Garnish
This is made of bacon, ham, sweetbreads, Spanish sauce, truffles, mushrooms, chicken quenelles, olives, cockscombs, beef palates, chicken livers, eggs, crayfish tails, oysters, gherkins, and sweet herbs prepared as follows: Place a large slice of fat bacon in a saucepan, when melted, remove any lean that there may be and add a bacon in a saucepan, when melted, remove any lean that there may be and add a slice of ham cut into small slices, a lump of fresh butter, and either a calf's or lamb's sweetbread cut into large dice; moisten with Spanish sauce and the dripping from a roasted leg of mutton carefully skimmed and passed through a tammy. Add thick slices of truffles, mushrooms, chicken quenelles, stoned olives stuffed with truffles-forcemeat, boiled blanched cockscombs and beef palates, the latter cut into dice, and lastly some chicken livers; simmer by the side of the fire, and just before serving, add the yolks of six hard-boiled eggs, a few crayfish tails and four dozen oysters blanched and warmed for a minute in mutton gravy, and season with gherkins and mixed sweet herbs; when done, clear off all grease and pour the garnish over the joint it is about to be served with.
This is not a dish but a garnish in the old French sense: a compound ragout ladled over a roast joint at the table. Half the ingredient list is no longer sold in ordinary shops, so read it as a template rather than a shopping list.
- The text repeats itselfThe phrase "a bacon in a saucepan, when melted, remove any lean that there may be and add a" is a typesetting duplication. Read it once: render a large slice of fat bacon, discard any lean, then add the ham.
- Spanish sauceSauce espagnole - the brown mother sauce built on veal stock, mirepoix and brown roux, reduced for hours. Oscar assumed a kitchen with a stockpot always going; a well-reduced brown veal stock or good demi-glace stands in.
- TammyA tammy is a worsted straining cloth, twisted between two people to force sauce through. Any fine chinois or a double layer of muslin does the same job for the skimmed mutton dripping.
- Cockscombs and beef palatesBoth were standard Victorian garnish meats and both are now special-order offal at best. They need long blanching and peeling before they enter the pan; without them the garnish is poorer but not broken.
- SweetbreadsSoak in cold water until the water runs clear, blanch, then peel the membrane before dicing. Calf's are larger and milder than lamb's; either wants gentle heat only, as high heat makes them grainy.
- QuenellesChicken forcemeat poached in small dumplings, dropped from two spoons into barely trembling stock. They are added to the ragout already cooked - simmering raw quenelles in the sauce will cloud it.
- The oysters are the hingeThe recipe has four dozen oysters blanched and warmed for only a minute in mutton gravy, then added just before serving. Anything approaching a simmer turns them to rubber, and they release liquor that thins the sauce.
- Simmer "by the side of the fire"That means the coolest part of the range: a bare tremble, no bubbles. The book gives no temperature; on a modern burner use the lowest setting with a diffuser.
- YieldFour dozen oysters, six egg yolks and a whole sweetbread indicate a garnish sized for a large joint; the book gives no yield or serving count. Scale the quantities down proportionally for a domestic roast.
Elaborate compound garnishes of this kind are the surviving furniture of early nineteenth-century grande cuisine, when a roast joint arrived at table dressed in a ragout of sweetbreads, cockscombs, palates, quenelles and truffles - the family that includes garniture financiere and garniture Toulouse. Such garnishes often carry a name, often a patron, a chef or a restaurant, and Durand is generally taken to point back to French practice rather than to anything invented at the Waldorf; Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book is in large part a compilation of the classical repertoire he had absorbed as a maitre d'hotel at Delmonico's and then the Waldorf, set down alongside plainer American receipts. What it records is a service style already fading: by the 1890s service a la russe was bringing the courses to table in sequence, and the great garnished joint carved before the guests was becoming a banquet piece rather than a dinner.