No. 2494

Galantine of Pheasant a la Lorenzo

Galantine de Faisan a la Lorenzo

Fry colorless in butter one pound of fat chicken livers; keep half of the finest ones aside. Chop up finely one pound of partridge meat and the same quantity of fat pork; season highly with salt, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg; stir well together, adding four egg-yolks and half of the liver well pounded; press the whole through a tammy and then put in an onion cut in one-eighth of an inch squares, blanched and fried colorless in butter, and some finely chopped parsley. Bone a pheasant, spread it open on the table, remove half of the thickness of the fillets, equalize the meats throughout the entire surface of the skin, then lay a third of the prepared forcemeat over, on this half of the livers laid aside, and the same quantity of quartered truffles; now another layer of the forcemeat, and scatter here and there the rest of the livers and as many truffles; spread all that remains of the forcemeat, and enclose the whole well in the pheasant skin; sew and roll the galantine in a napkin; tie it firmly at both ends and in the center, and place it in a braziere with a knuckle of veal and the game carcasses, a bunch of garnished parsley (No. 123), an onion containing two cloves, and a carrot cut in four; moisten with plenty of stock (No. 194a), cook slowly for two and a half hours, then leave to cool off in the stock for one hour; unwrap and remold it once more; this time placing it under a weight. When the galantine is thoroughly cold, unwrap and pare it nicely, then cover it over with brown chaudfroid (No. 594), and decorate with cut-up truffles, pistachios, tongue, and egg-white; lay it on a small three-inch thick socle made of carved rice. Prepare sixteen larks by boning and filling them with forcemeat composed of half foies-gras forcemeat (No. 78) and half game forcemeat (No. 75) and chopped truffles; cook them in No. 3 mousseline molds, having the breasts downward; prepare the same number of streaked partridge minion fillets, form them in the shape of rings two and a quarter inches in diameter, and lay each one on a separate piece of buttered paper; fill the centers with game cream forcemeat (No. 75), and poach in a slack oven. Put some No. 1 mousseline molds on a baking sheet, having ice around; on the bottoms form an eye of egg-white and truffle, and coat the mold with brown chaudfroid (No. 594); lay the cold unmolded larks in the center and fill up with chaudfroid. Turn them out only when very cold and arrange them around the galantine with the minion fillets between. Decorate around the socle with finely chopped jelly made with the stock. Bellevue hatelets may be fastened in the top of galantine if so desired.

← No. 2493 Galantine of Partridge, Elizabeth The Cold Service No. 2495 Galantine of Pheasant Cut Up →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A Delmonico's cold-buffet showpiece written for a brigade with a larder full of cross-referenced preparations. Most of it is ordinary game charcuterie, but the garnish calls for sixteen larks, and that part cannot be reproduced today.

The larks are the problemLarks are protected in the United States under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which covers the lark family; in the EU the skylark falls under the Birds Directive, though it remains a legally hunted species in some member states. For a cook in the US or UK there is no legal commercial source. The lark chaudfroid moulds that form the entire border of this dish therefore cannot be made, and the recipe as written should be treated as a historical document rather than a plan. A current recipe should be used for a cold galantine platter.
Ranhofer's numbersNos. 78, 75, 123, 194a and 594 are separate entries elsewhere in The Epicurean — two forcemeats, a garnished parsley bundle, a stock and a brown chaudfroid sauce. Without those pages the recipe is unusable; the numbering assumes you own the whole book.
TammyA tammy is a fine worsted or canvas straining cloth, twisted between two people to force a forcemeat or sauce through it. The modern equivalent of the effect is a food processor followed by a drum sieve or fine mesh.
BraziereA braisière is a deep, close-fitting lidded braising pan, not a grill. The galantine is poached in stock in it, wrapped in a cloth, not roasted.
Minion filletsThe filets mignons of a game bird are the two small strips of muscle lying against the breastbone, separate from the main breast. "Streaked" means larded or inlaid with strips of truffle or tongue for a striped cut surface.
Mousseline molds, Nos. 1 and 3These are numbered mould sizes from the sets Ranhofer worked with; the recipe implies the No. 1 is the larger, since a lark cooked in a No. 3 is afterwards set inside a No. 1 and the space filled with chaudfroid. There is no reliable modern conversion; small dariole or timbale moulds of two sizes stand in the same relation to one another.
Socle and hateletsA socle is a decorative plinth — here carved from a compressed block of cooked rice — that raises the galantine on the platter. Hatelets (also attelets) are ornamental silver skewers threaded with truffle, crayfish or comb and stuck upright into a cold piece purely for display.
Chaudfroid and the cold serviceBrown chaudfroid is an aspic-fortified sauce brushed on in thin coats over a thoroughly chilled piece and set between coats. It is a coating for an already cooked, already cold item, and it also means the finished galantine sits at room temperature on a buffet for hours — a practice modern service rules do not allow for a stuffed, ground-meat preparation.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years' cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry belongs to its long parade of cold showpieces built for the restaurant's private dining rooms and catered balls. A galantine — the word's usage connected with geline, a hen — is a boned bird stuffed with its own forcemeat, poached in stock, pressed cold and glazed; the technique long predates Delmonico's and was a standard of French charcuterie by the eighteenth century. What is distinctly American and distinctly Ranhofer is the naming: like the Lobster Newberg and the many dishes labelled after patrons and colleagues, "à la Lorenzo" may well commemorate a person connected with the house rather than a place or a style, though the point is not settled. The mounting is equally of its moment. Nineteenth-century grande cuisine judged a cold buffet by architecture as much as flavour — a carved rice plinth, a ring of individually moulded birds in chaudfroid, silver skewers rising from the top — and the casual demand for sixteen larks is a reminder that songbirds were then sold by the dozen in city markets on both sides of the Atlantic, a trade that protective legislation in the following decades ended.