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Salmon with Aspic Jelly
Singe and cut into halves lengthwise two calves' feet, bone them, put them in a saucepan with some water and boil them gently over a slow fire. Pass the liquor of the feet through a fine hair-sieve into a basin, skim off the fat and leave it to settle. Boil a thick slice of salmon in some court bouillon and wine, and when cooked leave it until cold in its liquor. Put half of the calves' feet liquor into a saucepan with an equal quantity of the cooking liquor of the salmon, add some chopped vegetables, a few sprigs of parsley, a bunch of sweet herbs, one-half tablespoonful of cloves and peppercorns, two teacupfuls of vinegar, one-half teacupful of water and three well-beaten whites of eggs. Stir the above mixture over the fire until it begins to boil, then move it to the edge of the fire and allow it to simmer until the jelly is clear. Strain the jelly through a jelly-bag into a basin and leave it until cold. Place the slices of salmon in a deep dish, distribute the jelly over it piling it in the center, and keep it in a cold temperature for from twenty-four to thirty hours. Garnish with jelly croutons, hard-boiled eggs cut in halves and yolks, and then serve.
A cold buffet dish built on two separate operations: a calf's-foot gelatin stock and a poached salmon, married in a clarified, sharply vinegared jelly. Almost everything here happens the day before serving.
- The hinge: clarifyingThe recipe has you stir only until the mixture begins to boil, then move it off the direct heat; after that, leave the raft alone. A rolling boil or a stirred raft breaks the coagulated albumen back into the jelly and it will not run clear. Hold it at a bare shiver until a crust forms and the liquid beneath is transparent.
- Calves' feetTwo feet is roughly 2-3 lb of bone and connective tissue and wants 4-6 hours at a bare simmer to give a stock that sets firm. Butchers will still order them; a Latin or halal market often has them as patas. If you substitute, about 2 tablespoons of powdered gelatin per quart of liquid gives a jelly firm enough to slice, but you lose the body and mouthfeel the feet provide.
- TeacupfulAn unstandardised measure in this book, generally reckoned at somewhere between 4 and 6 fl oz. Two teacupfuls of vinegar is therefore around a cup or more, which makes an aggressively sharp jelly by current taste; a jelly this sharp was presumably intended as a foil to cold fish and served in small quantity.
- Half a tablespoon of clovesRead as half a tablespoon of cloves and peppercorns together, not each. Whole cloves at that rate will dominate; six or eight is plenty for a quart of jelly.
- Court bouillonWater with white wine, sliced onion, carrot, a bay leaf, parsley stems and salt, simmered before the fish goes in; the recipe adds further wine. Poach the salmon below a simmer, 160-170F, and let it cool in the liquor as directed.
- Chilling"A cold temperature" meant an icebox or a cold larder. Use the refrigerator at 40F or below. The jelly itself will set in four to six hours; the 24-30 hours allows the flavours to marry and the mass to firm enough to cut cleanly in the dish.
- Jelly croutonsPour a shallow layer of the surplus clarified jelly into a tray, chill it hard, and cut it into dice or diamonds with a knife dipped in hot water. They are garnish only, scattered round the base.
- YieldTake the "thick slice" as a centre-cut piece; something around 2 lb would serve six as a cold course. The jelly quantity is generous; expect leftovers to set in a separate dish.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf dining rooms at the moment when the elaborate cold buffet was the clearest signal a kitchen could send about its seriousness, and a clear aspic was its proof of skill: it required a long gelatin extraction, a flawless clarification, and cold storage that most domestic households could not manage. Calf's-foot jelly is often said to have been a common source of gelatin in professional kitchens into the twentieth century, and it doubled as an invalid food, sweetened with wine and lemon. Commercial granulated gelatin was available in America by the 1890s and would displace the feet within a generation, but a kitchen of the Waldorf's standing still built the jelly from scratch, in part because the foot stock carries flavour and, by traditional account, a silkier set than the packet does. The vinegar, the cloves and the halved hard-boiled eggs place the dish in the older European tradition of soused and jellied fish rather than the lighter, wine-based aspics that came later.