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Patties Financiere
Butter twelve fluted deep patty pans, line them with short paste, then with paper, fill them with flour and bake in a moderate oven. When done remove the paper and flour, coat them inside with a thin layer of forcemeat, and set them at the entrance of the oven to keep warm. Roll out some puff paste and cut twelve rounds out of it the same size as the inside of the patty; brush over with beaten egg, mark lines across the top with a sharp pointed knife, and bake till lightly browned; prepare a mixture of little scallops of fat livers and truffles, some cocks' combs and small quenelles; put it in a saucepan with a little reduced brown sauce and warm thoroughly, but do not let it boil. Fill the patties with the mixture, previously turning them out of the pan; put on the covers of puff paste, arrange them on a folded napkin, garnish with parsley, and serve hot or cold.
An Escoffier-era garnish served in pastry cases, written for a brigade that had demi-glace, forcemeat and quenelles already standing by. The work is almost entirely in the components; the assembly takes minutes.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as around 350F for the blind-baked short paste shells. The recipe gives no temperature for the puff paste lids; they are normally baked hotter, in the region of 400-425F, so they rise and brown rather than dry out.
- Paper and flourThis is blind baking. The paper is a liner and the flour is the weight; dried beans, rice or ceramic pie weights do the same job, and the flour can be saved and reused for the same purpose.
- Fluted deep patty pansDeep tartlet or brioche moulds of about 2 to 2.5 inches across. Straight-sided muffin cups work but give a less elegant shell and are harder to turn out cleanly.
- Short paste and puff pasteTwo different doughs are required: a sturdy pâte brisée for the cases, which must hold a filling, and puff pastry for the lids. Cut the lids the width of the case interior so they sit down into the rim.
- Forcemeat liningA thin coat of fine forcemeat is spread inside the baked shell; the recipe then sets the cases at the entrance of the oven to keep warm. A thin layer of the same mixture used for the quenelles is the practical choice.
- Fat livers, cocks' combs"Fat livers" is foie gras; scallops means thin slices. Cocks' combs were a standard financiere element and are hard to obtain now; without them the dish rests on the truffle and quenelles the recipe already calls for. Truffle can be reduced to a shaving or replaced with good sauteed mushrooms.
- Do not let it boilThe hinge. The garnish is bound in a little reduced brown sauce (espagnole or demi-glace) and only warmed through; boiling breaks the foie gras slices down into fat and grit, and toughens the quenelles.
- Reduced brown sauceThe recipe asks only for a little reduced brown sauce: espagnole or demi-glace, which in financiere garnishes is often flavoured with Madeira. A modern equivalent is a strong veal or chicken stock reduced to a light glaze, thickened only enough to coat.
- Yield and servingTwelve patties, which is a first course for six or a canape course for twelve. Assemble at the last moment: filled shells soften quickly. The recipe allows serving either hot or cold.
Financière is one of the named garnishes of nineteenth-century French cookery, a fixed set rather than a free improvisation: cockscombs and kidneys, truffle, mushrooms, quenelles and sometimes olives, bound with a Madeira-scented brown sauce. The name is generally traced to the wealth of the ingredients rather than to any particular financier, and it appears in Carême's and later Escoffier's repertoires as a filling for vol-au-vents, timbales and small patty cases like these. Its presence in the kitchen chapter of a grand New York hotel book at the end of the century reflects how closely American hotel dining followed the French canon. The dish survives mainly as a museum piece now, less because it is difficult than because two of its defining ingredients have largely left the market.