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Salpicon Montglas
Mince, as for a julienne, four mushrooms, one truffle, the breast of a small, cooked chicken, or of any game, and one-half ounce of cooked ham, or the same quantity of cooked, smoked beef tongue. Put all these into a saucepan, adding one gill each of well-reduced Madeira sauce and tomato sauce; let this cook for five or six minutes, aud then use it as required.
A classic French filling rather than a finished dish: a bound dice of cooked meat and mushrooms used to stuff pastry cases, omelettes and garnishes. It comes together in minutes once the components are on hand.
- "Mince, as for a julienne"Not mincing in the modern sense. Cut everything into matchsticks of even thickness, roughly 1/8 inch, so the pieces stay distinct in the sauce. A true salpicon is often diced instead; either works, but keep the cuts uniform.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. So half a cup each of Madeira sauce and tomato sauce, about a cup of liquid to bind roughly a cup and a half of solids.
- "Well-reduced" is the hingeBoth sauces must be thick enough to coat the julienne and hold it together off the heat. A loose salpicon will soak and split any pastry case you put it in. Reduce until a spoon drawn through leaves a clear track.
- Madeira sauceIn classical French practice this meant demi-glace finished with Madeira. A good reduced brown veal stock with a splash of dry Madeira, simmered down, gets you there; commercial demi-glace concentrate is the practical shortcut.
- TruffleThe recipe calls for one whole truffle; in an American kitchen of this period that would have been an imported truffle, fresh in season but often tinned or otherwise preserved. A jar of preserved truffle peelings, or a few reconstituted dried slices, keeps the character without the price. Truffle oil is not a substitute here.
- Cooked chicken or gameThe breast of a small bird is about 4 to 6 ounces of cooked meat. Poached or roast chicken, pheasant, partridge or leftover roast game all suit; the point is meat already cooked and cooled enough to cut cleanly.
- Five or six minutesLong enough to heat through and marry the sauces, no longer. Everything in the pan is already cooked, and extended simmering turns the julienne stringy and the mushrooms grey.
- Yield and useAbout two cups, enough to fill eight to twelve small vol-au-vents or bouchées, four croustades, or four to six omelettes. It can be made a day ahead and reheated gently, but fill pastry only at the last moment.
Montglas is one of the old named garnishes of French classical cookery, generally traced to the household of the Marquis de Montglas and standardised in the nineteenth century as a salpicon of tongue or ham, mushroom, truffle and often foie gras, bound with Madeira-scented demi-glace. Salpicon itself comes through French from Spanish, describing food cut small and moistened with sauce; by Escoffier's day it was less a dish than a building block, the stuffing for bouchées, timbales, croustades and stuffed eggs. Its appearance in Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book is a reminder that the Waldorf's kitchen was a French kitchen operating in New York, and that a book aimed partly at American home cooks still assumed the reader could produce a well-reduced Madeira sauce and lay hands on a truffle.