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Stuffing for Poultry Galantine
Cut into small squares three pounds of the cooked flesh of either ducks or fowls; peel and chop two hard-boiled eggs and one medium-sized onion. Mix all these together with three breakfast cupfuls of stale breadcrumbs, three well-beaten eggs and one-half breakfast cupful of poultry fat that has been warmed. Season to taste with pepper, salt and sage. After the forcemeat has been spread in the boned duck or other bird, about one breakfast cupful of chopped aspic jelly strewn over it will be an improvement, and it will set in the forcemeat.
This is a forcemeat, not a bread stuffing — it is meant to be packed into a boned bird, rolled, poached and served cold in slices. A few of Oscar's measures need translating before you start.
- Breakfast cupfulThe breakfast cup was never a standardised measure; it is usually reckoned at somewhere between 8 and 10 fl oz depending on the household. Take three breakfast cupfuls of crumbs as roughly 3 to 4 cups loosely packed, and adjust: the mixture should hold together when squeezed, not slump.
- The hinge: cook the galantine to temperature, not to timeThe three beaten eggs go in raw, so the whole roll must reach 165F at the centre. Poach the wrapped, tied galantine in stock at a bare simmer and check with a probe. The recipe covers only the forcemeat and gives no cooking instruction at all; the size of the bird decides the time.
- Stale breadcrumbsHome-made crumbs from dry bread, not packaged dried crumbs, which are far finer and will absorb too much liquid. Day-old sandwich bread torn and pulsed briefly is the closest match.
- Poultry fatRendered duck or chicken fat, warmed only until liquid — hot fat will scramble the eggs. Duck fat is sold in tubs; unsalted butter works but sets firmer when chilled, which changes the slice.
- Aspic jellyA firm, clear stock jelly, chopped fine and scattered over the spread forcemeat so it melts during poaching and gels again as the galantine cools. A strongly reduced homemade poultry stock, or a good commercial stock set with gelatine, does the same job; skip it and the cut slices will be drier.
- Boning the birdThe recipe assumes you can bone a duck or fowl whole through the back, skin intact. Ask a butcher, or buy pre-boned. The skin is the casing, so tears matter more than neatness.
- Seasoning a cold dishSeason more assertively than feels right — salt, pepper and sage all read weaker once the galantine is chilled. If you want to check, fry a teaspoon of the mixture and taste it before filling the bird.
- YieldThree pounds of cooked meat plus crumbs and eggs makes a substantial roll, enough for a buffet platter of cold slices. Cooling under light weight gives a more compact cut.
Galantine belongs to the cold-buffet cookery that made the Waldorf's kitchens famous: a bird boned, stuffed with its own flesh worked into a forcemeat, rolled in its skin, poached in stock and served glazed and sliced. The name is usually traced to Old French words for chicken or jelly, and by the nineteenth century it had become a standard of the professional garde-manger, precisely because it could be made a day ahead, sliced to order and made to look impressive on a mirrored platter. Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms in the era when such cold pieces anchored banquet service, and the frugality of this particular recipe — it starts with cooked duck or fowl, and binds it with stale bread — is a departure from the classic method, in which the forcemeat is normally built from raw flesh; one might read it as the professional habit of turning yesterday's roasts into today's centrepiece, though that is inference rather than documented practice.