No. 2490

Galantines of Guinea Fowl a la Lytton

Galantines de Pintades a la Lytton

Bone entirely three young guinea fowls, spread them on the table, remove the thigh meats, suppress the sinews of the fillets and all the superfluous fat; cut the fillets in two on their thickness and use them to lay where the meat is lacking, then fill them with chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) mingled with a salpicon of truffles, pistachios and udder, all cut in three-sixteenths inch squares and well mixed; they should, when stuffed, each weigh two pounds. Cover the entire outside with very thin slices of fat pork and wrap them up in napkins; roll all the same thickness and put on to cook in some stock (No. 194a) for one hour and a half, then drain, unwrap and wash out the napkins; wrap them up again without the fat pork and hang them on a hook, fastening a weight to the end of each one so as to have them well pressed; when very cold unwrap once more and pare again; cover them over with white chaudfroid (No. 596), decorate with black truffles, coat with jelly and dress them on a dish against an upright or sloping supporting piece, it being two inches across at the summit and six at the base by five inches in height, covered over with ravigote butter (No. 583), and strew chopped parsley over. Set a cup on top of the summit, filled with truffles. Make truffle balls with foies-gras taken from a terrine, pounded and rubbed through a sieve; when very cold form this into inch and a quarter diameter balls, roll them in truffle peelings that have been finely chopped and passed through a sieve. When these imitated truffles are very cold dip them in half-set jelly and lay each one in a white paper crimped case the same size as themselves; place these also between the galantines and garnish all around with chopped jelly and jelly croutons (No. 2442).

← No. 2489 Galantine of Gosling, Melon-Shaped The Cold Service No. 2491 Galantines of Partridges a la Clementine →

For the Modern Kitchen

A full nineteenth-century buffet centrepiece: three boned birds, poached in cloth, pressed cold, masked in white chaudfroid and mounted against a carved support. Nothing here is difficult in itself, but the sequence takes two days and the cross-references do most of the work.

The hinge: poach, never boilRanhofer gives no temperature; keep the stock at a bare simmer for the full hour and a half. A rolling boil bursts the forcemeat through the skin and squeezes out the fat, and the galantine slices crumbly instead of close-grained. Cook to an internal 165F at the centre of the roll.
Chill under refrigeration, not on a hookRanhofer says only to hang the weighted rolls until very cold, without saying where. Cooling two pounds of stuffed poultry slowly at room temperature is what current food-safety guidance warns against. Press them flat between trays with a weight on top, in the refrigerator, and get them below 40F well within the four-hour cooling window.
UdderBeef or veal udder, poached and pressed, was a standard forcemeat fat in French professional kitchens and gave a pale, mild, faintly waxy dice. It is effectively unobtainable now outside a few specialist butchers; blanched pork back fat cut to the same three-sixteenths inch dice is the usual substitute.
The cross-referenced recipesNo. 89 is chicken quenelle forcemeat (pounded flesh with panada, egg and cream, in the usual form), No. 194a a cooking stock, No. 596 the white chaudfroid — a velouté set with aspic — and No. 583 a ravigote butter, green from its herbs. No. 2442 croutons are firm aspic cut into shapes. All are in the same volume and none can be skipped.
NapkinsA linen napkin is the wrapper Ranhofer specifies (with thin fat pork next to the bird for the poaching stage); muslin or a double layer of cheesecloth works the same way. Tie the ends and truss the roll along its length so it holds an even cylinder — "roll all the same thickness" is what makes three galantines slice to matching rounds.
The supporting pieceThe "upright or sloping supporting piece" is a socle — traditionally carved rice paste, tallow or bread, here masked with ravigote butter. Its dimensions are given exactly (6 in. base, 2 in. top, 5 in. high) because the whole arrangement is built to be seen from across a room. A block of firm butter-coated bread, or simply a low tiered stand, gets the same effect.
Imitation trufflesThe foie gras balls rolled in sieved truffle peelings are decoration, not garnish to be eaten warm. They must be refrigerator-cold before dipping in half-set aspic or they will slump; work in small batches and return them to the cold between stages.
YieldThree galantines at two pounds each, cold and pressed, will slice for roughly 30-40 buffet portions. This is a banquet dish and does not scale down usefully below one bird.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its cold-service chapter is essentially a catalogue of what a fashionable American buffet table looked like when it was still being dressed in the French manner — everything masked in chaudfroid, decorated in truffle, and set up on a socle so the guests could see it before it was carved. Galantine itself is an old French preparation: a bird boned, stuffed, rolled in cloth, poached and served cold in its own jelly, with the name generally traced to the same root as gelatine and to earlier forms meaning simply a dish set in aspic. Guinea fowl (pintade) was raised on American farms but read as a slightly grander bird than chicken, which suited the occasion. Ranhofer named dishes after the patrons and dignitaries they were served to, though in this case the person behind the name is not documented.