No. 2318

Patties with Gravy—Small

Petits Pates au Jus

Take one pound of lean meat from the thick loin end and free it of fat and sinews; chop and pound it with five ounces of chopped fat salt pork, and two ounces of bread crumbs; season with salt and pepper, and chopped parsley. Line some round channeled tartlet molds with fine foundation paste (No. 135); cover the bottoms with a layer of the above forcemeat, set in the middle a ball of salpicon a la financiere with truffles (No. 667), and finish with another layer of the forcemeat; cover with a flat of foundation paste (No. 135), place on this a round flat of thin puff paste (No. 146) one inch in diameter, egg over, and with the point of a knife make a fanciful rosette on the top. Let cook for half an hour in a slack oven; remove, lift off the covers, and pour in some half-glaze sauce (No. 413) with Madeira wine; unmold and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a pastry station and a stockpot always going, so this entry is mostly assembly: two pastes, a forcemeat, a garnish and a sauce, all made elsewhere in the book. Sort out the components first and the patties themselves take twenty minutes to build.

Slack oven"Slack" is the coolest working oven; sources vary, but somewhere around 275-325F is the usual modern reading. At that heat half an hour will set the forcemeat and dry the pastry without colouring the puff-paste top too fast; the meat mixture contains raw pork, so cook to 160F at the centre rather than trusting the clock alone.
The meatThe recipe does not say what animal; "lean meat from the thick loin end" is left open, and veal is the likeliest reading for a forcemeat of this kind. A pound of trimmed veal loin or, more economically, well-trimmed shoulder, works; the five ounces of fat salt pork is structural, not seasoning, and should not be reduced or the forcemeat turns dry and crumbly.
Chopping and poundingChop and pound is a food processor now. Keep the meat and pork very cold, pulse rather than run, and stop while there is still a little texture; over-processing warms the fat and the filling weeps in the oven.
Salt porkSalt pork varies a great deal in saltiness from brand to brand. Taste a small poached spoonful of the forcemeat before you fill anything and hold back on added salt until you have.
Salpicon a la financiereA financiere garnish is typically cockscombs and cock kidneys with mushrooms, truffles and quenelles, bound in Madeira sauce; check No. 667 for Ranhofer's own composition. Cockscombs are hard to come by; a salpicon of diced mushroom and truffle, or truffle alone, bound with a spoonful of thick Madeira demi-glace and chilled firm enough to roll into balls, keeps the intent.
Half-glaze sauceNo. 413 is demi-glace: reduced brown sauce finished with Madeira. It goes in after baking, through the lifted lid, so it must be hot and loose enough to pour but reduced enough not to soak the crust.
The moldsRound channeled tartlet molds are fluted tins; the recipe gives no size, but the one-inch puff round implies something appreciably wider. The recipe puts a flat of foundation paste on as a cover, with the small puff round on top as a decorative cap, and after baking directs you to lift off the covers to pour in the sauce.
Yield and servingA pound of meat plus the pork, crumbs and garnish comes to roughly a pound and a half of filling, enough for something like a dozen small patties depending on the mold you use. The page files them under hot miscellaneous entrees, and they must go to the table immediately after saucing.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked in thirty-odd years at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style plainly. "Petits pates" are the small raised or molded meat pies that had been a staple of French garnish and entree cookery since the eighteenth century, served hot or used to dress a larger platter. The "a la financiere" garnish is a period marker in itself, a rich Madeira-sauced salpicon of truffle, cockscombs and cock kidneys whose name is generally read as a nod to the banker's table; by the mid-twentieth century the offal elements had largely fallen out of use, and the name survives mostly in old books. The fat salt pork worked into the forcemeat is the older, thriftier layer beneath the truffles: before commercial pork fat and reliable refrigeration, salt pork was how a kitchen kept lean chopped meat moist.