No. 2412

Aspic of Poies-Gras—Small

Petits Aspics de Foies-Gras

On a bed of chopped-up ice lay ten timbale molds (No. 1, Fig. 137); decorate the bottoms of each with a ring of truffles filled with a piece of red tongue, and the sides with fanciful cuts of truffles and egg-white dipped in half-set jelly to make them adhere to the cold molds, then pour into each one an eighth of an inch thickness of jelly. Unmold a terrine of foies-gras, remove from it cylindrical pieces a quarter of an inch less than the diameter of the molds and the same height; range them in the molds, finish filling up with more jelly and set them on ice for half an hour longer. Dip the timbales into hot water to facilitate the unmolding, and dress in a circle either on an inch and a quarter high foundation (Fig. 8) without the central vase, or else simply on a cold dish; fill up the inside of the circle with chopped jelly and set croutons of jelly around.

← No. 2411 Aspic of Foies-Gras The Cold Service No. 2413 Terrine of Foies-Gras in Aspic—Whole →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold-buffet assembly rather than a cooked dish: the work is all in the setting, the lining and the unmolding. Everything must stay cold enough for the jelly to grip but not so cold that it clouds or freezes.

The hinge: work on ice, in layersEach stage — the decor dipped in half-set jelly, the eighth-inch base layer, the final fill — must set firm before the next goes on, or the truffle cuts float and the pattern slides. "Half-set" means jelly at the point where it coats a spoon and thickens visibly, roughly the consistency of raw egg white.
Timbale moldsRanhofer's No. 1 timbale mold is a small straight-sided or slightly tapered individual mold; the book's figure reference is the only guide to its exact size. Modern dariole or baba molds, or small ramekins, work; metal chills faster and unmolds more cleanly than ceramic.
The jellyAn aspic jelly made from clarified veal or poultry stock, well seasoned and usually fortified with Madeira or sherry. If using powdered gelatin with a good stock, about 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons per cup gives a jelly firm enough to unmold and still pleasant to eat. Clarity matters more here than anywhere else in the book.
Red tongueBrine-cured (saltpetre-pink) beef tongue, sold cooked at delicatessen counters. Any firm cured red meat cut in small rounds serves the same decorative purpose.
Foies-gras terrineA terrine of foie gras, chilled hard, cut with a plain round cutter into cylinders a quarter inch narrower than the molds so jelly can run down all sides. Dip the cutter in hot water between cuts. Modern duck foie gras terrine is the usual substitute for the goose product more common in Ranhofer's day.
UnmoldingA one- to two-second dip in hot water, then invert immediately. Longer and the outer jelly goes slack and the decoration smears.
Chopped jelly and croutonsChopped jelly is set aspic broken up with a knife; croutons of jelly are firm aspic cut into neat triangles or diamonds — both garnish only, no bread involved.
Yield and serviceTen individual aspics, one per person, as a cold entree. Assemble the day before if you like; they hold well covered and chilled, but dress the chopped jelly around them at the last minute or it weeps.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to a chapter written for the cold buffet of a large formal dinner — a service where food was expected to be looked at for some time before it was eaten. Aspic work of this kind was the showpiece discipline of late nineteenth-century grande cuisine: clear jelly, black truffle, white egg, pink tongue, all set in a pattern that appears only when the mold comes away. Ranhofer's cross-references to numbered figures, molds and pedestal "foundations" show how the book was meant to be used, as a working system rather than a collection of independent recipes.