No. 2479

Cutlets of Woodcock, Poniatowski

Cotelettes de Becasses, a la Poniatowski

Dress this cold entree on a wooden foundation covered with noodle paste (No. 142), fastening it on to a dish; decorate the sides of the foundation, and place a support in the center surmounted by a small fancy tin vase, both covered the same as the foundation; the top of the base is flat and closed; it is simply to be dressed with three fresh woodcock heads with feathers, and held in shape, arranged in a triangle; surround their base with chopped jelly and a chain of truffle balls. Cut the meats of three cooked, cold woodcock into a fine montglas, put this in a saucepan with half as much cooked foies-gras, and as many truffles cut exactly like the meats; combine this montglas with some good, partly warm, succulent brown chaudfroid (No. 594), reduced with game fumet (No. 397); smooth the preparation and use it to fill twelve to fourteen tin cutlet-shaped molds brushed over with jelly; equalize the tops and leave to cool one hour on ice. Dip these cutlets in hot water, unmold on a baking sheet and smooth the surfaces once more; lift them up one by one, dip into a good brown chaudfroid sauce (No. 594) slightly thickened on ice, and return them at once to the sheet to have this sauce get thoroughly cold on ice. Surround the base of the support with a very thick layer of chopped, sticky jelly, pushed on through a pocket. At the last moment detach the cutlets from the sheet, pare neatly, fasten a small fancy favor frill (No. 10) in each, and dress them in a circle around the support on the foundation; coat with jelly so as to give them a brilliant appearance.

← No. 2478 Veal Cutlets a l'Anacreon The Cold Service No. 2480 Cutlets of Woodcock a la Sarah Bernhardt →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a display piece from Delmonico's cold buffet: a moulded game forcemeat set with aspic, dressed on a raised wooden stand. The eating part is small; most of the labour is architecture. A few things need translating before any of it makes sense.

Woodcock is not a market birdIn the United States the American woodcock is a migratory game bird and cannot legally be bought or sold; birds only reach a table through licensed hunting in season. Eurasian woodcock is sold in parts of Europe. Cooks without a legal source generally substitute squab, quail or a strongly flavoured duck breast, accepting that the characteristic gaminess goes with it.
The heads are decoration, not foodThree feathered heads mounted in a triangle on the pedestal, plausibly to identify the game the dish was made from. They are raw animal parts standing on a serving surface for the length of a buffet; anyone recreating this should treat them as inedible garnish and keep them physically separate from the cutlets.
MontglasNot a sauce here but a salpicon: meat, foie gras and truffle diced small and uniform, so the three read as one texture. The recipe does not give a size; Ranhofer's instruction to cut the truffles 'exactly like the meats' is the operative direction.
Chaudfroid, and its working windowA brown chaudfroid is a reduced game sauce with enough gelatine to set. It coats only in a narrow band of temperature: too warm and it runs off, too cool and it ropes and streaks. Work it over ice, test on a chilled spoon, and rewarm gently rather than letting it stiffen in the pan.
Fumet and reductionThe game fumet is a concentrated game stock. Reducing the chaudfroid with it is what gives the filling flavour once it is cold, when everything tastes flatter.
The foundation and noodle pasteThe wooden socle and the tin vase are structural, never eaten; noodle paste (a stiff flour-and-egg dough) is the plaster that covers them. Modern practice would use a chilled platter or a low riser and skip the woodwork entirely, dressing the cutlets in a ring on a bed of chopped jelly.
Chopped jellySet aspic chopped fine with a wet knife, then piped through a pastry bag. It stays workable only while cold; keep the bag on ice and the plated dish refrigerated until service.
Moulds and unmouldingCutlet-shaped tin moulds brushed with jelly, an hour on ice, then a brief dip in hot water to release. The recipe does not time the dip; keep it short, since a soft surface will not take the coating sauce evenly.
YieldThe recipe fills twelve to fourteen small moulds from three birds. It gives no number of servings; these are garnish-sized pieces for a cold buffet, not a main dish.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the cold service chapters are the part of the book furthest from home cooking: they describe buffet centrepieces built on wooden stands, coated in chaudfroid and glazed with aspic so they would hold their gloss through a long evening. Woodcock was among the most prized of American game birds in that era, when market hunting was still legal and wild birds moved freely through city restaurants; the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 is generally credited with ending that trade. Names like Poniatowski were attached to garnishes in honour of patrons and public figures, and the Poniatowski were a Polish princely family with members active in Franco-American society in the 1890s, though Ranhofer, as usual, records the name without explaining it. The book gives two consecutive woodcock cutlet preparations, this one and a Sarah Bernhardt, which says something about how a nineteenth-century kitchen built prestige: the same technique, redressed and rededicated.