No. 2457

Chaudfroid of Prairie Hen-Grouse

Chaudfroid de Poule de Prairie--Tetras

Prepare a fine garnishing composed of large cooked cocks'-combs, poached chicken kidneys, round truffles and mushroom heads; glaze the truffles with a thin layer of brown chaudfroid sauce (No. 594), the combs and kidneys remaining in their natural state glazed with half-set jelly. Cut the breasts of two cold roast pheasants into quarter of an inch thick slices, suppressing the skin; have them well pared and of uniform size, dip each one separately in brown chaudfroid, and range them at once on a baking sheet, keeping them somewhat apart; let the sauce harden on ice. Incrust a large dome-shaped mold in ice, coat it over with an eighth of an inch thick layer of jelly, and when this is set dress on to the bottom and around the mold the prettiest pieces, intermingling them with the garnishings; fill up the mold with some half-set jelly. One hour after dip the mold in hot water, wipe dry and turn the chaudfroid over on a dish foundation covered with white paper; surround with small crimped paper cases, each one containing a small truffle dipped in brown chaudfroid. Fasten one garnished hatelet in the center of the dome, lay chopped jelly all around, and jelly croutons around this.

← No. 2456 Chaudfroid of Fillets of Pheasants The Cold Service No. 2458 Chaudfroid of Pullet, Plain →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A show piece from the cold buffet, built in a mold lined with aspic and served unmolded on a papered base. Almost none of the work is cooking; it is assembly at a temperature narrow enough that the jelly stays set while you handle it.

The bird is not the bird in the titleThe heading calls for prairie hen (tetras, grouse), but the text tells you to slice the breasts of two cold roast pheasants; the wording may simply carry over from the preceding recipe, No. 2456, Chaudfroid of Fillets of Pheasants. Either way, use whatever lean game bird you have roasted and cooled, reckoning two breasts per bird.
Brown chaudfroid sauceNo. 594 is Ranhofer's brown chaudfroid, conventionally a reduced brown (espagnole-type) sauce combined with jelly so that it sets to a coating. It must be used at the point where it just coats the back of a spoon and no warmer, or it runs off the meat; if it stiffens, warm it briefly and try again.
Incrusting the mold in iceThis means burying the mold in a bowl or tub of broken ice so the jelly sets on contact with the metal. An ice bath lets you turn and tilt the mold while it chills, which a freezer does not.
Cocks' combs and chicken kidneysBoth were standard nineteenth-century garnish and are hard to find now outside specialist butchers. Small poached mushroom caps, blanched cockscomb-shaped rounds of turned turnip, or simply more truffle and mushroom will hold the pattern; the garnish is largely decorative.
HateletAn hâtelet is an ornamental silver skewer threaded with truffle, comb or crayfish and stood upright in the dish. It is purely display and can be left out without touching the result.
Jelly quantity is unstatedThe original assumes a standing supply of clarified aspic. For a large dome mold you might reckon on the order of a quart to line, fill and chop for the border. Judge the set by testing a spoonful on a cold plate rather than by the packet instructions, or the aspic turns rubbery.
Temperature during serviceThe dish contains cooked poultry suspended in gelatin and was designed for a cold room and a quick service. Keep it refrigerated until the moment it goes out and do not leave it standing on a buffet for hours.
Unmolding and yieldA few seconds in hot water is enough; longer and the outer jelly clouds and slumps. Two pheasants' worth of sliced breast in a large dome should serve roughly eight as part of a cold table, depending on what else is on it.

A Little History

Chaudfroid means "hot-cold": a dish cooked hot, then coated with a sauce that is served cold and set with gelatin, and the technique was one of the pillars of the nineteenth-century cold buffet, where food was expected to arrive glazed, molded and architectural. This entry comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its numbered cross-references to other recipes show how the book was built as a working system rather than a set of standalone dishes. Prairie hen — the greater prairie-chicken of the Midwestern grasslands — reached eastern restaurant kitchens in enormous numbers by refrigerated rail in the 1870s and 1880s, which is why a Manhattan chef could treat it as a routine buffet bird; the market hunting that supplied it was one cause of the population's collapse, alongside the ploughing-up of the grasslands, and a mix of state game laws and federal action — chiefly the Lacey Act of 1900 — ended the trade. The interchangeability of grouse and pheasant here, and the casual call for cocks' combs and chicken kidneys, both point to a kitchen with a large brigade and a supply chain no home cook had.