No. 2418

Aspic of Pullet a la Cussy

Aspic de Poularde a la Cussy

Raise the fillets from six medium chickens, weighing about two pounds each; suppress the epidermis, and remove the minion fillets, from which suppress the sinews and fine skin; pare the large fillets into half-hearts and place them in a buttered sautoir with the pointed ends lying toward the center. Make five gashes on each minion fillet and fill them in with graded scalloped rounds of truffle; roll them up crown-shaped, place them on pieces of buttered paper and with a pocket fill the center with a chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) and foies-gras well-mingled, having half of each; lay on top a round piece of red beef tongue, and set these in a buttered sautoir; pour over some clarified butter and lemon juice, and cover each one with a sheet of buttered paper and let cook in a moderate oven. When cold cover the minions with half-set jelly and the large fillets with white chaudfroid sauce (No. 596); when this is cold repeat the operation and lay them on a baking sheet one beside the other without allowing them to touch; detach them by slipping a thin-bladed knife under, then pare them into half-hearts all of the same size. Decorate a plain or channeled cylindrical mold with fanciful cuts of truffles, tongue, gherkin, egg-white, or pistachios, dipping them singly into half-set jelly, and applying them symmetrically on to the bottom and sides of the very cold mold, having them only on the top and bottom, leaving the center undecorated. Coat over with jelly so as to support the decorations, then lay the minion fillets half an inch from the bottom, and at even distances from one another; fill it up with jelly half an inch above the minions, and when this is set dress on the large fillets, one overlapping the other, the pointed ends downward; then fill up with jelly and let it get perfectly hard. Have a plain dish covered with a tin bottom, and spread this with ravigote butter (No. 583) and a round of white paper over; unmold the aspic on this, and fill the center with a wooden support with a cup filled with cut-up vegetables on top, held on with a skewer. Around the bottom range chopped jelly and crusts.

← No. 2417 Aspic of Pheasant The Cold Service No. 2419 Aspic of Quails—Breasts →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A full-dress Delmonico's cold entrée: chicken breasts poached in butter, masked in chaudfroid, and set into a decorated jelly mold. Nothing here is difficult on its own, but the whole thing is an assembly job that lives or dies on temperature control.

Read it as a schedule, not a recipeJelly, chaudfroid sauce, quenelle forcemeat and the cooked fillets all have to exist before assembly begins, and each layer must set hard before the next is poured. Plan on two days, with the mold going back into the refrigerator between every step.
The parts of the breastThe "large fillet" is the breast proper and the "minion fillet" (filet mignon) is the tender that lies beneath it. "Suppress the epidermis" means strip the skin and the silvery membrane; the sinew in the tender pulls out easily if you grip it with a towel and scrape along it with a knife back.
Equipment namesA sautoir is a straight-sided sauté pan. A "pocket" is a piping bag. The buttered paper laid over the fillets is a cartouche, and it is doing real work: it keeps the surface from drying and coloring, which would show through the white chaudfroid.
Moderate ovenThe book gives no figure; a moderate oven is conventionally taken as somewhere around 350F. The fillets are barely poaching in butter and lemon, not roasting; cook them through to 165F internal, the safe temperature for poultry. Overcooked breast is the usual failure, and a glossy coating hides nothing once it is sliced.
Jelly and chaudfroidThe jelly is clarified chicken or veal stock set with gelatin, strong enough to unmold cleanly and cut without weeping. Chaudfroid (No. 596) is a velouté-based white sauce with jelly stirred into it. Both must be worked at the "half-set" stage, syrupy and just beginning to hold a line; over a bowl of ice water, with a second bowl of warm water to bring it back when it stiffens too far.
Decorating a cold moldChill the mold in ice or the freezer first. Dip each truffle, tongue, gherkin or egg-white cut in half-set jelly and lay it in place with the point of a knife or a pin; a thin flood of jelly locks the design before anything else goes in. The recipe restricts the decoration to the top and bottom, leaving the center plain.
Foie gras and truffleThe forcemeat is half chicken quenelle (No. 89), half foie gras. A raw or lightly cooked foie gras behaves best; a ready-made mousse will slacken the mixture. Preserved black truffle is the practical substitute for fresh; truffle-flavored oil is not.
Food safety in a long cold buildCooked poultry, foie gras and gelatin sitting on a bench for hours is the one genuine risk. Return everything to refrigeration between operations, work in short sessions, and keep total room-temperature time under two hours across the whole assembly.
The presentationThe 'tin bottom' spread with ravigote butter (No. 583) and covered with a round of paper is a base for the unmolded aspic, the butter holding it in place; the wooden support and skewered cup are Victorian table architecture and can be dropped without harming the dish. The chopped jelly and crusts ranged around the base are worth keeping.
YieldSix chickens give twelve breast fillets and twelve tenders. As a cold entrée on a buffet, it serves ten to twelve.

A Little History

Garnishes and dishes labeled à la Cussy are generally traced to Louis, Marquis de Cussy, a prefect of the palace under Napoleon and a well-known gastronomic writer of the early nineteenth century; the name attached itself to preparations classically associated with truffle. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the Delmonico's kitchens in New York in two stints, from 1862 to 1876 and again from 1879 to 1896, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that repertoire, and its cold service section is the clearest surviving picture of what a grand-restaurant buffet looked like before refrigeration was ordinary. Aspic work of this kind was a display of technical control as much as of flavor: the chef was demonstrating that he could hold clarified jelly, chaudfroid and cooked poultry at the right temperatures long enough to build a piece in layers.