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Game Souffles
Cut off about two pounds of flesh from any cold roasted game, trim off the skin, chop the flesh, pound it in a mortar, then pass it through a fine hair-sieve. Mix three-quarters of a pint of Spanish sauce with one teacupful of essence of fowls and boil until it is reduced to one-third. Mix the pounded game into the sauce and leave it until cold. Beat the yolks of ten eggs and mix them with the puree; whip the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, add them to the mixture and season with a little grated nutmeg and salt and pepper. Fill some small paper cases with the mixture, put them into a quick oven and bake for fifteen minutes. Place the cases on a dish, and serve garnished with fried parsley and slices of lemon.
A late-Victorian hotel dish for using up cold roast game, built on two French building blocks the book assumes you already have on hand. Read the sauce and stock notes first, since without them the recipe has no starting point.
- Spanish sauceThis is sauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce of brown roux, veal or game stock and mirepoix, cooked down for hours. Three-quarters of a pint here is about 1 1/2 cups; reduced together with the essence to a third, you are left with something in the order of three-quarters of a cup of very thick, glossy sauce, depending on how the teacupful is reckoned.
- Essence of fowlsA concentrated chicken stock reduced until it is almost a glaze. A teacupful in period usage is smaller than a modern 8-oz measuring cup, commonly reckoned at 4 to 6 fl oz, though the book does not define it. A commercial demi-glace or a heavily reduced homemade chicken stock stands in for both this and the Spanish sauce.
- Mortar and hair sieveThe pounding and sieving exist to get an absolutely smooth paste with no sinew or skin. A food processor does the pounding; still push the puree through a fine mesh sieve afterwards, because game connective tissue will not break down and shows up as threads in the finished souffle.
- The base must be coldThe instruction to leave the puree until cold is the hinge. A warm base can slacken the beaten whites on contact and the souffles will rise poorly. Cold base, yolks beaten in, then the whites folded in at the last moment and straight into the oven.
- Quick ovenConventionally reckoned somewhere around 400 to 450F; the book gives no number. Fifteen minutes at that heat suits small individual cases; larger vessels need lower heat and longer, or the outside sets before the centre cooks.
- Paper casesThese are caisses, stiff paper or foil souffle cups, buttered inside. Small ramekins work identically. The paper was partly presentation and partly insurance, since the case goes to the table and nothing has to be turned out.
- Egg proportion and yieldTwo pounds of sieved game, ten yolks and ten whites is a large batch: figure twelve to sixteen individual cases, enough for a course for that many people. Halve it cleanly if you want six.
- Fried parsleyWhole dry sprigs dropped into hot fat for a few seconds until they stop hissing, then drained. Wet parsley will spit violently, so dry it thoroughly first.
Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf from 1893, and his 1896 cook book records the kitchen as a working brigade would have known it, which is why a recipe like this opens by assuming a pot of espagnole and a jar of poultry essence are already to hand. Game souffles fit the game larder economy of a large hotel: pheasant, grouse and venison roasted for dinner service came back cold, and the trimmings could be pounded, sieved and rebuilt into a delicate entree rather than served as leftovers. The technique is from the French repertoire that dominated American luxury cooking in this period, and the paper caisse, the fried parsley and the lemon slices are standard garnish vocabulary of the period rather than anything particular to this dish.