No. 2287

Fat Livers a la Toulousaine-Whole

Foies-Gras Entier a la Toulousaine

Select a fine, raw, fresh and white fat liver that has not yet been put in water or milk; remove the gall, and stud each side with a row of raw truffles; season and butter over with a brush; wrap it first in thin bards of fat pork, then in a flat of pie paste (No. 144), closing all the apertures carefully. Lay it on a baking sheet and cook for an hour and a quarter in a slack oven. After it has been removed, unwrap, take away the fat pork and dress the liver on a long dish, garnishing around with small molded quenelles, cocks'-combs and mushrooms; serve at the same time an espagnole sauce (No. 414) reduced with Madeira and an infusion of Ceylon cinnamon.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A whole lobe of foie gras studded with truffles, sealed in fat and pastry, and baked gently — essentially a self-basting pressure vessel. Almost everything that can go wrong here is a matter of temperature.

The hinge: keep the oven low"slack oven" in this period is generally taken as roughly 250-300F. Foie gras fat begins to render at temperatures well below those used for other meats (terrines are usually taken only to about 115-120F internal); the pastry case and the pork barding exist to trap the fat that does render so the lobe holds its shape. A hotter oven gives you a hollow crust and a pool of grease.
What "a fine, raw, fresh and white fat liver" isA whole raw duck or goose foie gras, grade A, 1.25-2 lb. Modern livers arrive vacuum-packed and chilled rather than warm from the bird, and the gall bladder has already been removed. You will still need to open the lobes and pull out the central vein network with the liver at cool room temperature, when it is pliable.
No soakingThe instruction that it "has not yet been put in water or milk" is pointed: soaking livers in water or milk was a recognised practice at the time, and Ranhofer is specifying a liver that has not been treated that way. He does not say why.
Bards of fat porkSheets of pork fatback sliced very thin, or caul fat, which is easier to buy and self-sealing. The barding is a barrier, not a flavouring, and comes off before serving.
The paste is a wrapper, not a pieNo. 144 is used here purely to seal the liver; it is unwrapped and discarded before serving, not eaten. If you want an edible pastry version you are making pate en croute, which is a different dish with different timings.
Garnishes that have vanishedCocks' combs are effectively unobtainable outside specialist French butchery. Small quenelles (poached forcemeat dumplings, veal or chicken) and turned mushroom caps carry the plate perfectly well on their own.
The sauceEspagnole (No. 414) is the classic brown mother sauce, reduced with Madeira; a good reduced veal demi-glace is the practical stand-in. Infuse a small piece of Ceylon cinnamon in the hot sauce for a few minutes and remove it — Ceylon is markedly milder and more floral than the cassia sold as plain "cinnamon," and cassia will dominate.
Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; a whole lobe would reasonably serve eight to ten as a course. Serve warm rather than hot, sliced thick with a hot knife; foie gras served at full oven heat reads as greasy.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of his three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is a Paris kitchen's dish transplanted whole to Manhattan. À la toulousaine in nineteenth-century French cookery points two ways at once: Toulouse and its surrounding Gascon country were, and remain, one of several centres of French fat-liver production, while the classic garniture toulousaine of quenelles, cocks' combs, kidneys and mushrooms belonged to the standard grammar of haute cuisine garnishes. Baking a whole liver sealed in a lean flour crust is the older technique behind the pâté en croûte — the pastry held the fat in and the oven's heat off. That a New York restaurant could offer a whole raw foie gras studded with fresh truffles in the 1890s says a good deal about how quickly transatlantic steamers had made French luxury provisions ordinary on the better American menus.