No. 2449

Cases of Thrushes with Jelly-Small

Petites Caisses de Grives a la Gelee

For this entree have a border of jelly the center being filled with a round piece of wood of the same diameter and height as the border and covered with white paper. Bone eight thrushes, spread them out on the table and season; fill them with a fine game forcemeat (No. 91), some foies-gras and truffles made into balls. Cover them with a band of paper to hold them in a round shape, then range them on the bottom of a small sautoir covered with fat pork, putting them quite close to one another; salt over and moisten to nearly their height with a good unskimmed stock (No. 194a), and cover over with more fat pork; boil up the liquid, then withdraw the saucepan and put on the lid. Cook the boned birds for three-quarters of an hour in a slack oven; they should but simmer, as they only require to be poached, and let cool off in this same liquid. Unwrap, pare, cover by dipping each one singly into a brown chaudfroid sauce (No. 594) thickened on ice; after this sauce is cold, pare the birds and place them in round porceiain cases; dress these on the border. Garnish around the cases with jelly cut in three-sixteenths inch squares.

← No. 2448 Cases of Snipe with Jelly-Small The Cold Service No. 2450 Celestines of Pullet a la Talleyrand →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a set piece from the cold buffet of a late nineteenth-century American hotel kitchen, and it cannot be reproduced today because of its central ingredient. The notes below are for reading the recipe rather than cooking it.

Thrushes are protected birdsSong thrushes, fieldfares and their relations were sold as game in European and American markets into the early twentieth century. In the United States thrushes are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. In the European Union they fall under the Birds Directive; some species may still be hunted in certain member states, but commercial sale is restricted almost everywhere. There is no ordinary lawful supply chain for this dish.
Anyone wanting a cold chaudfroid entree should work from a current recipeThe technique here — boning small birds, poaching them in stock, glazing in chaudfroid and setting them in aspic — survives in modern cold-larder cookery with legal poultry. Use a present-day recipe rather than adapting this one.
The cross-referencesRanhofer's numbers point to base preparations elsewhere in The Epicurean: No. 91 is a fine game forcemeat, No. 194a a good unskimmed stock, No. 594 a brown chaudfroid sauce. None of the page makes sense without the parent book, which is how the whole volume is built.
"Fat pork"Pork fat cut in sheets, used here as barding above and below the birds so that nothing browns and nothing dries. The page does not say whether it is fresh or salted.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a deep pot. Its shape lets the birds sit in a single close-packed layer with the stock coming most of the way up them.
"Slack oven" and "they should but simmer"A slack or slow oven is the coolest setting of a coal range. The stock is brought up to the boil on the stove, then the pan is withdrawn and lidded, and in the oven the birds are only to simmer — poached, not stewed, so the forcemeat sets without the flesh shrinking away from it. This is period terminology and a period standard of doneness, not a specification to cook by.
Chaudfroid "thickened on ice"The sauce is cooled over ice until it thickens enough to coat, and the birds are dipped one at a time. The birds are pared a second time after the coating has gone cold, to tidy the edges.
The wooden centreThe jelly border encloses a round wooden plug of the same diameter and height, covered with white paper. The recipe does not say it is removed; the paper covering suggests it stays as a concealed support. Either way it is a reminder that this was architecture for a buffet.
YieldEight birds, dressed in round porcelain cases. The recipe does not state how many cases or how many guests.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of what that kitchen did, which is why the book reads less like a cookbook than a catalogue with a numbering system. Small birds belong to the older European game tradition it drew on: thrushes, larks, ortolans and buntings were netted in quantity around the Mediterranean and in central Europe, sold cheaply by the dozen, and treated in fine cooking as a vehicle for expensive stuffings — here forcemeat, foie gras and truffle, so that the bird is chiefly a wrapper. The cold service section is where the hotel kitchen showed off: everything glazed, moulded, set in aspic and built on a base, designed to hold its shape for hours on a buffet. Songbird eating declined through the twentieth century as populations fell and protective legislation spread, and pages like this one now read as a record of a market that no longer exists.