No. 2483

Foies-Gras in Border

Foies-Gras en Bordure

Open a terrine of foies-gras; suppress all the top fat and keep on ice for two or three hours. Fill a fancy border mold (Fig. 470) with fine cold aspic jelly (No. 103), and put it on ice for one hour. Cut up the contents of the terrine with a thin steel spoon the size and shape of a tablespoon, dipping it each time into warm water; should this cutting be neatly done the pieces will each acquire the shape of the spoon, rounded lightly; lay all of these as fast as they are done on a cold baking sheet, one beside the other, repairing those that may have been broken during the process, and put them away on ice for a quarter of an hour. Just when prepared to serve dip the border mold into warm water, wipe neatly, and invert the mold on a cold dish, having a wooden or tin foundation in the center exactly the same size and covered with white paper; on this foundation dress the pieces of foies-gras pyramidically, placing the poorest looking ones underneath, and piling the remainder into a steep pyramid.

← No. 2482 Duckling, with Spanish Olives The Cold Service No. 2484 Foies-Gras in Cradle, to Be Cut in Slices →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly job, not a cooking one: a ring of aspic turned out around a pyramid of foie gras scooped into neat ovals. Everything depends on temperature.

The hinge: cold, then colderFoie gras softens fast in the hand and collapses into grease at room temperature. Chill the terrine hard, chill the baking sheet, chill the serving dish, and work in short sessions, returning the shaped pieces to the refrigerator or freezer the moment they slump.
"Terrine of foies-gras"A tinned or crockery-potted whole-liver preparation, sealed under a cap of rendered fat, which is the "top fat" to be suppressed. A modern bloc de foie gras or a whole-lobe terrine both work; mousse and pâté-style products are too soft to hold the spoon shape.
Aspic No. 103Ranhofer's aspic jelly, cross-referenced from elsewhere in the book. Any firm, well-clarified savoury aspic is the equivalent. It must be strong enough to unmold as a freestanding ring, so err on the stiff side.
Border moldA ring mold, ideally fluted. The recipe allows an hour on ice; a deeper mold will need longer to set through.
The spoon techniqueClose to quenelle-shaping, the same motion used for ice cream today. The recipe specifies dipping the spoon in warm water each time, so the piece releases as a rounded oval lightly domed like the bowl of the spoon; re-dip between each scoop or the fat drags.
UnmoldingA brief dip in warm water loosens the aspic; too long and the surface melts. Invert onto the cold dish and lift the mold straight up.
The center foundationA disc of wood or tin covered in white paper, sitting inside the ring to give the pyramid height without wasting foie gras. A small inverted ramekin or a cut round of stiff card does the same work; it is a plinth, not something to eat.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) records the cold buffet of the Gilded Age dining room, where the visual architecture of a dish mattered as much as its taste: molded aspics, socles, borders, and pyramids built on hidden foundations of wood and tin. Foie gras in this period came largely from Strasbourg and P"erigord, arriving in sealed terrines and tins, which is why the recipe begins by opening a container rather than cooking a liver. The plural "foies-gras" reflects the French usage of the day. The style of assembly is often traced to Antonin Car"eme's early nineteenth-century grosses pi"eces, and the technique of scooping a soft preparation into ovals with a spoon dipped in warm water survives largely unchanged as the modern quenelle.