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Godard Garnish
This is made of truffles, cockscombs, sweetbreads and forcemeat quenelles seasoned and prepared as follows: Boil the required quantity of truffles, cockscombs and sweetbreads studded with fillets of truffles separately, in rich stock seasoned with salt and pepper, and boil also in the same liquor some large forcemeat quenelles. Arrange this garnish in small heaps round the dish.
This is a component, not a dish: a classic grande cuisine garnish meant to be spooned in neat mounds around a braised joint or poultry. Oscar assumes you already have quenelle forcemeat, a strong stock and a butcher who sells offal, so most of the work is sourcing and prep.
- The hinge: cook each element separatelyTruffles, cockscombs, sweetbreads and quenelles all reach doneness at different points, and cockscombs need far longer than anything else. Poach them in the same seasoned stock but in separate batches, then hold them warm in a little of that liquor so nothing overcooks while the rest catches up.
- SweetbreadsSoak in several changes of cold water for a few hours until they stop bleeding, blanch briefly, then press between two plates under a weight and peel off the membrane before larding with truffle strips. Poach in the stock until firm to the touch -- roughly 15-20 minutes for veal sweetbreads. The recipe specifies no times or temperatures; cook them through rather than leaving them rare.
- CockscombsEffectively unobtainable at retail now; a specialist poultry supplier or an Italian or Chinese butcher is the only realistic source. They are largely collagen and want an hour or more of gentle simmering to turn tender and translucent. Small poached button mushrooms are the obvious stand-in; Escoffier's version of the garnish includes large mushrooms alongside the combs.
- TrufflesThe recipe does not say whether the truffles are fresh or preserved. Preserved or jarred truffle is the practical substitute today, and it needs only warming through in the stock rather than boiling, which strips its aroma. Slice the fillets for studding the sweetbreads before you cook anything.
- QuenellesThe recipe does not say what the forcemeat is; "large" points to quenelles shaped with two wet spoons, roughly egg-sized. Poach at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil, or they break up; 8-10 minutes for that size. Test one first and adjust the mixture with cream or egg white if it falls apart.
- "Rich stock"The recipe does not say which; a well-reduced veal or chicken stock, gelatinous when cold, fits the description. The poaching liquor becomes strongly flavoured by the end and is worth reducing for the sauce for the joint rather than discarding.
- Quantity and servingNo amounts are given because the garnish is scaled to the roast. For a dish serving six to eight, figure a dozen quenelles, a dozen sweetbread slices, a dozen cockscombs and a small truffle, arranged in alternating heaps around the platter so each portion gets one of everything.
Garnitures like this were the grammar of nineteenth-century restaurant cooking: a named set of components that told a cook and a waiter exactly what would surround a braised veal cushion or a poached fowl. Godard is one of the grandest of them, and it survives in Escoffier's Guide Culinaire as a garnish of quenelles, cockscombs and kidneys, truffles, mushrooms and lamb sweetbreads, served with a Godard sauce built on mirepoix and sparkling wine. The name is generally traced to a person rather than a place, though the identity of the Godard honoured is not firmly documented. Oscar Tschirky's version, printed before the Guide Culinaire appeared, gives a shorter list, and the fact that he could name cockscombs and truffles without comment says a good deal about what a first-class American hotel larder held in the 1890s.