No. 2450

Celestines of Pullet a la Talleyrand

Celestines de Poularde a la Talleyrand

Cut up into eighth of an inch squares a pound of braised and cold white pullet meat, free of fat and bones, also a quarter of a pound of peeled truffles cut in the same sized squares. With the leg meats from which the skin, bones and fat have been removed, prepare a puree and dilute it with half a pint of brown chaudfroid (No. 594); press through a tammy into a tin bowl and thicken the preparation on ice, adding to it the truffle and chicken salpicon. Cut some slices of unsmoked red beef tongue three-sixteenths of an inch thick, and these into rounds two and a quarter inches in diameter; cover one of the sides with the preparation, having it well rounded on top, smooth with a knife and let cool off on ice, then mask over with brown chaudfroid. Decorate the surfaces of these with truffles, cover with half-set jelly and dress them in a circle. Cut some medium-sized apples in two, peel and core, then lay them on a buttered baking sheet and sprinkle over with powdered sugar, and let cook for a few moments in a hot oven. When done and cold, use these apples to fill in the center of the circle; garnish around the celestines with chopped jelly and outside of this lay evenly cut jelly croutons (No. 2442).

← No. 2449 Cases of Thrushes with Jelly-Small The Cold Service No. 2451 Chaudfroid of Chicken a la Clara Morris →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold chaudfroid plate built in layers, and the whole thing stands or falls on temperature control: every coating goes on at the moment it is thick enough to cling but still fluid enough to flow smooth. Work in a cool room with an ice bath at your elbow.

The hinge: coating consistencyBrown chaudfroid is a demi-glace or espagnole set with aspic. It masks properly only in a narrow window, when it coats a spoon and just begins to hold a line. Too warm and it runs off the tongue rounds; too cool and it sets in ridges you cannot smooth.
PulletA young hen under a year old, larger and fatter than a spring chicken. A 4-5 lb roasting chicken, braised and thoroughly chilled, gives the pound of white meat and the leg meat for the purée.
Chaudfroid, in shortNo. 594 is Ranhofer's own brown chaudfroid sauce. Any modern brown chaudfroid works: roughly equal parts strong demi-glace and clear aspic, seasoned and strained. The half pint here is one cup.
TammyA tammy cloth is a fine worsted straining cloth, worked by twisting the ends against each other. A drum sieve followed by a fine chinois, or a food processor and a tamis, does the same job.
SalpiconThe word simply means ingredients diced small and bound in sauce. The eighth-inch dice is not decorative fussiness: larger pieces show as lumps through the smoothed dome and break the surface when you mask it.
Unsmoked red beef tongueBrine-cured tongue, boiled and pressed, sold in delis as pickled or corned tongue; the red comes from curing salts, not smoke. Buy it cooked and cold, and slice it a scant quarter inch so the rounds stay rigid under the mousse.
The applesThe recipe asks only for 'a hot oven.' Halved, cored, sugared apples need only a few minutes at a brisk heat to glaze without collapsing; they are a cold garnish, so they must hold their shape.
Jelly workHalf-set jelly is aspic cooled to the point of syrup, spooned over in thin coats and set between each. Chopped jelly is firm aspic cut on a damp board; croutons are the same jelly cut into neat triangles or diamonds.
Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; a pound of meat plus the puree should cover something in the region of sixteen to twenty rounds. Assemble the day of service, keep refrigerated, and dress the circle only when the platter goes out, since aspic weeps as it warms.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the working record of thirty years in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to the cold buffet -- the ranked display of glazed, decorated, aspic-bound pieces that anchored a formal supper table in the late nineteenth century. Chaudfroid, literally "hot-cold," names a sauce cooked hot and served set and cold, and the whole genre existed to be looked at as much as eaten. The Talleyrand name attaches to a family of garnishes built on truffle, generally traced to the kitchens of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, whose table under Antonin Carême became a byword for diplomatic cookery; by Ranhofer's day the label functioned mainly as shorthand for truffled. Dishes like this one, requiring a chef, a larder cook and a cold room, all but vanished from private kitchens once household staff did, surviving into the twentieth century mostly in hotel garde-manger competition work.