No. 2426

Ballotines of Quail a la Tivolier

Ballotines de Cailles a la Tivolier

Remove all the meats from three young rabbits; keep the minion fillets aside and suppress the sinews from the remainder; pass the meat twice through the machine (Fig. 47), weigh and allow double the same quantity of unsalted fat pork. Chop up the pork fat, add the rabbit meat and chop together once more. Chop up also eight ounces of lean ham cooked separately and mix this in with the rabbit, seasoning with salt and spices for game galantines (No. 168). Bone twelve quails, equalize the meats, removing half of the fillets to lay them in the places that are bare of meat; spread a third of the forcemeat over the birds and on each one lay four small truffles, wrapped in udder, placing them in lengthwise; on each side of these truffles put slices of well-seasoned rabbit tenderloin, and over another third part of the forcemeat and four more truffles; lay at each end and in the center the remainder of the tenderloins and forcemeat over the whole. Close up the quails, sew and wrap them in slices of fat pork, then in a cloth; tie it firmly to keep the galantines in good shape. Line a braiziere (Fig. 134) with bards of fat pork, lay the boned quail on top with the game carcasses around; moisten with plenty of mirepoix stock (No. 419). Two hours' cooking will be quite sufficient; take off and put them under weight in molds the same shape as the ones used for ballotines of squabs a la Madison (No. 2427) and when very cold unmold and wash the same molds and decorate them with truffles and white of egg; cover the decorations with a light coating of jelly; fill them with the quails and jelly; leave on ice for two hours then turn them over and dress them on a trimmed rice socle two inches high; garnish around with chopped jelly and over this cold artichoke bottoms (No. 2501). Garnish the center with small crescents of red beef tongue glazed with jelly.

← No. 2425 Ballotines of Lamb Cupola Shaped The Cold Service No. 2427 Ballotines of Squabs a la Madison →

For the Modern Kitchen

A full-dress cold buffet piece from Delmonico's kitchen: twelve boned quail stuffed with rabbit forcemeat and truffles, braised, pressed, then set in decorated aspic moulds. Nothing in it is difficult, but it is a two-day job and several of the materials have to be reinterpreted.

The hinge: bone the quail through the backEverything else depends on getting twelve clean, flat, skin-on quail with the ribcage and spine out. Work with a small sharp boning knife from the back, keep the skin unbroken, and reserve the carcasses — the recipe lays them in the braising pan around the birds, and that liquid becomes the jelly.
UdderBeef udder, poached and pressed, was a standard neutral fat wrapper in nineteenth-century garde-manger work and is effectively unobtainable now. Caul fat is the practical stand-in for wrapping the truffles; thin sheets of blanched fatback will also do.
"Unsalted fat pork" and the fat ratioThis means fresh pork back fat, not salt pork or bacon. Ranhofer's two parts fat to one part rabbit is far richer than modern galantine practice, which runs closer to equal parts or 2:1 meat to fat; at one part meat to two parts fat the farce will read as very heavy on a cold plate.
Scale it downThree rabbits yield roughly 3–4 lb of meat, which with double its weight in fat gives 9–12 lb of forcemeat — several times what twelve quail can hold. One rabbit, or about 1 lb of boned meat with fat in proportion, is enough unless you are also making pâtés with the surplus.
The equipment referencesThe "machine (Fig. 47)" is a hand meat grinder — use the coarse plate, then the fine, chilling the meat and fat between passes. The braisière is a lidded braising pan; bards are thin sheets of fatback lining it. "Spices for game galantines" (No. 168) is Ranhofer's own mixed-spice formula — take the composition and the dose from that numbered recipe rather than assuming them.
BraisingTwo hours in mirepoix stock at a bare tremble — an oven at 325°F is easier to control than the stovetop. The farce needs to reach 165°F at the centre of the thickest ballotine; check one with a probe rather than trusting the clock, since the parcels vary in size.
Pressing and settingCool the ballotines under weight while still wrapped, in the refrigerator, not at room temperature. Strain and clarify the braising liquid for the jelly; a modern cook will usually need to reinforce it with gelatine, since bone-only aspic from an hour or two of braising rarely sets firmly enough to unmould.
The socle and the garnishThe two-inch rice socle is a moulded, compressed base for display and was not meant to be eaten. Skip it and dress the ballotines on a chilled platter if the presentation is not the point. Cold artichoke bottoms, chopped jelly and glazed crescents of tongue are all made ahead.
YieldTwelve ballotines, one per person, as a cold course at a large table.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its Cold Service chapter is essentially a catalogue of buffet architecture: galantines, chaud-froids, aspic moulds and the socles they stood on. A ballotine takes its name from ballot, a bundle or pack — meat boned, stuffed, rolled and tied, then in the cold version pressed and set in jelly, as opposed to the galantine proper which is more often poached in its cloth. Dishes in this book carrying a personal name generally honour a patron, a colleague or a guest of the house, and Tivolier is presumably one of them; Ranhofer rarely explains the dedications. What the recipe really documents is the economy of a large brigade kitchen — three rabbits butchered down for farce, twelve birds boned by hand, moulds decorated with truffle and egg white in patterns — labour that only made sense where a dozen cooks were on the payroll and quail and truffles arrived by the crate.