No. 2455

Chaudfroid of Partridges a la Beatrice

Chaudfroid de Perdeaux a la Beatrice

Have four partridges picked, singed, drawn, and well cleaned; remove the legs, bone, suppress the sinews and stuff them with game quenelle forcemeat (No. 91) and cooked fine herbs (No. 385); braise and set them under a weight. Raise the fillets, and saute them in butter without coloring; lay them under a weight also, then pare them as well as the legs into half-hearts, and cover both with brown chaudfroid (No. 594) prepared with game fumet (No. 397) extracted from the carcasses; repeat this operation until the coating of chaudfroid be of a sufficient thickness, then leave to cool, and cover over with another layer of half-set jelly. Dress all the pieces on an empty swan (No. 3597), with an opening on the top or back part of the swan, and surround with small "pains" prepared as follows: Decorate some mousseline molds (No. 2, Fig. 138) with fanciful cuts, either of truffles, tongue, or pistachios dipped in half-set jelly; coat them rather thickly with jelly, and fill with a game "pain" preparation made with game puree of the fillets and parings mixed with chaudfroid, bechamel (No. 593), and well drained, whipped cream; add a small salpicon of truffles and tongue cut in one-eighth of an inch squares, and when the molds are thoroughly cold, invert and range them around the swan; surround with chopped jelly and a border of jelly croutons (No. 2442).

← No. 2454 Chaudfroid of Larks The Cold Service No. 2456 Chaudfroid of Fillets of Pheasants →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a showpiece from the cold buffet, written for a brigade that already had stock, forcemeat and aspic on hand. Read it as an assembly plan: the actual cooking is minimal, and everything depends on the temperature of the sauce when you coat.

The hinge: chaudfroid temperatureBrown chaudfroid is a gelatin-set espagnole-type sauce, and it will only cling in an even film while it is cool but still fluid -- roughly at the point where it just coats the back of a spoon. Too warm and it runs off; too cool and it sets in lumps. Chill the pieces between coats and keep the sauce over barely warm water, stirring, so it never skins.
What the cross-references stand forNo. 91 is a game quenelle forcemeat; No. 385 is a cooked fine-herb mixture; No. 397 is a concentrated game stock made from the carcasses; No. 593 and 594 are bechamel and the brown chaudfroid itself. None can be substituted with a jar of anything, and the fumet carries much of the coating's flavour, so build it from the bones as instructed.
"Empty swan" and jelly croutonsNo. 3597 is a hollow decorative swan serving as the centrepiece, with the pieces dressed over and around it; the recipe does not say here what it is made of. A modern cook can use any chilled platter; the jelly croutons of No. 2442 are firm aspic cut into neat shapes.
Mousseline moldsThese are small individual molds, of about the size of a dariole or a small ramekin. Line each with a thin film of aspic, set the truffle, tongue or pistachio cuts into it, then a thicker jelly lining before filling.
Partridge, and what to buyWild game birds are not sold in most markets. Farmed chukar or gray partridge are the closest available; two quail per person will also work, though the fillets are small and awkward to pare into half-hearts.
Braising and setting under weightThe stuffed boned legs braise gently until tender, then press between two trays under a light weight while cooling so they hold a flat, even shape. The fillets need only to be cooked through in butter without taking colour -- only a few minutes, as they are small.
Cold-chain disciplineAspic work means cooked poultry sitting out through several coating cycles. Work in batches straight from the refrigerator, return pieces to the cold between coats, and hold the finished platter refrigerated until service rather than letting it stand at room temperature.
YieldFour birds give eight boned legs and eight fillets, plus enough parings for the "pain" filling: eight portions on a buffet, or four as a plated cold course with two or three of the small molds each.

A Little History

Chaudfroid, literally "hot-cold," names a class of dishes cooked hot and served cold under a gelatin-bound sauce, and the technique was one of the defining skills of the nineteenth-century garde manger. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), gives in the cold service a run of chaudfroids, among them larks and pheasant fillets, each distinguished less by cooking than by its garnish and its dressing on a socle, pedestal or moulded bird. Named variants like a la Beatrice were the ordinary currency of that trade: a chef fixed a particular arrangement of forcemeat, coating and moulded pains under a name, and the name is generally traced to a patron or a performance rather than to any documented origin. The dish belongs to a period when the buffet table was a piece of architecture, and it tells you how much labour a large restaurant kitchen could put behind a single cold platter.