No. 2241

Cream of Pheasant, Chantilly

Creme de Faisan, Chantilly

Pound the meats of a raw pheasant; season and pass them through a sieve; return to the mortar and pound again with four egg-yolks, and three-quarters as much butter; put this into a thin metal bowl, and beat on ice to render it smooth and acquire a body, mixing in about a gill of raw cream; try a little piece in the oven in a very small mold to discover its consistency, and rectify when necessary. Prepare a montglas composed of uncooked foies-gras, truffles, and recently cooked tender red beef tongue; place it in a small sautoir to mingle with two or three spoonfuls of veloute sauce (No. 415) reduced with pheasant fumet (No. 397); keep it in a bain-marie. Butter a mold (Fig. 139) with clarified butter; fill with the forcemeat, smooth the top, then poach in a bain-marie for twenty minutes, with a white paper laid on top; wipe the mold neatly after it has been removed, and turn the contents over on to a rice croustade foundation (Fig. 9a) fastened on to a dish; this to be an inch thick, and slightly wider than the mold; fill the hollow at once with the montglas; brush the forcemeat lightly with a little of the veloute sauce, serving more separately.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a mousseline forcemeat — raw game pounded with egg yolk, butter and cream, then poached gently in a mold — dressed with a diced garnish. Ranhofer assumes a brigade with a marble mortar and a block of ice; a food processor and a bowl of ice water do the same work.

Keep everything cold, alwaysThe hinge of the dish is temperature. Yolks, butter and cream held in suspension by pheasant protein will break and weep the moment the mixture warms much above 45F. Chill the meat, the butter, the cream and the bowl, work in short bursts, and return the mixture to the ice whenever it looks slack or greasy.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. "Three-quarters as much butter" is ambiguous in the original: read against the four egg yolks it would be roughly 3 tablespoons, but it may equally be read against the pounded meat, which is the more usual mousseline proportion. Judge by the test quenelle.
Mortar and sievePulse the raw breast and leg meat in a food processor with the seasoning, then push it through a fine drum sieve or tamis to remove sinew, then return it to the machine for the yolks and butter. The sieving step is not optional with pheasant, which is full of tendon.
The test quenelleRanhofer's advice to poach a scrap in a tiny mold is the single most useful line here. If it is rubbery, add cream; if it collapses, add a little more yolk or a spoonful of cold sieved meat. Do this before you commit the whole batch.
MontglasA classical garnish of small dice — here foie gras, truffle and cooked tongue — bound in a little sauce. If you use raw foie gras, let it cook through in the velouté rather than merely warming, and hold the finished garnish above 140F; liver held lukewarm is the weak point of the dish.
Cross-referencesNo. 415 is Ranhofer's velouté and No. 397 his game fumet. Any good velouté reduced with strong pheasant stock, or a light game jus thickened lightly, gives the same result.
PoachingButter the mold, cover with buttered paper, and set it in a bain-marie of water held at a bare tremble, around 170-180F, never boiling. The original gives twenty minutes without stating a mold size; the center should read about 160F and feel set but yielding.
The rice croustadeA foundation of stiff cooked rice, an inch thick and slightly wider than the mold as the original specifies, fastened to the dish; the hollow of the turned-out forcemeat is then filled with the montglas. A short-grain rice cooked down until sticky and pressed into a buttered form will hold its shape.
YieldOne pheasant makes enough forcemeat for four to six as a small entrée. Serve immediately; a mousseline that sits goes dense and dry.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is a fair specimen of what the "Miscellaneous Entrées" chapter was for: small, highly worked dishes served between the fish and the roast at a long dinner. The name follows the French kitchen's shorthand — crème for a cream forcemeat lightened with raw cream, Chantilly conventionally signaling that cream is the defining element. The montglas garnish of foie gras, truffle and tongue is a much older classical preparation, its name generally traced to the Marquis de Montglas, though as with most such attributions the connection is traditional rather than documented. The lean, dry flesh of a wild pheasant benefits far more from butter, yolk and cream than from roasting.