No. 2517

Mushrooms Stuffed and Glazed with Chaudfroid

Champignons Farcis Glaces au Chaudfroid

Select even-sized mushrooms about an inch in diameter; empty out the interiors and fill them up with foies-gras rubbed through a sieve. Fasten them together, two by two, to form a ball, then glaze over with brown chaudfroid (No. 594); lay them on top of a ring of cooked beef tongue and on the summit place a circle cut from hard-boiled egg-white: fill the center of this circle with a round piece of very black truffle and coat the whole with half-set jelly (Fig. 496).

← No. 2516 Garnishing of Whole Hard-Boiled Egg-Yolks Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2518 Garnishing of Stuffed Spanish Olives →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a garnish, not a dish: a decorative unit built to ring a cold buffet piece, and everything about it is a matter of temperature control and neat cutting. Ranhofer assumes you already have brown chaudfroid and aspic on hand, which is where most of the work actually lies.

The hinge: glaze temperatureBrown chaudfroid coats properly only in a narrow window, when it is syrupy and just short of setting; judge it by how it ribbons off the spoon rather than by a thermometer. Too warm and it runs off in streaks; too cool and it goes lumpy. Keep the sauce over a bowl of tepid water, and have the mushroom balls thoroughly cold and dry so the coat sets on contact.
Chaudfroid No. 594The cross-referenced sauce is not given here; Ranhofer's brown chaudfroid is broadly a well-reduced brown sauce fortified with aspic jelly and strained. In a modern kitchen that means a well-reduced brown sauce with enough bloomed gelatin (roughly a teaspoon of powdered gelatin per cup, adjusted by trial on a cold saucer) to set softly, cooled and skimmed of every trace of fat.
Preparing the mushroom cups"Empty out the interiors" means the stem and gills, leaving a clean hollow shell. Small white buttons around an inch across are the right size. The recipe does not say whether the caps are cooked; cooking them briefly *a blanc* — a couple of minutes in water with lemon juice and a little butter — keeps them pale and firm. Drain them upside down until dry; wet caps will not take a glaze.
Foies-gras rubbed through a sieveA cooked foie gras terrine or bloc, passed through a drum sieve to a smooth paste. Commercial foie gras mousse or parfait works and is already the right texture. Pipe it in slightly proud of the rim so the two halves meet with no gap.
Fastening two by twoA short length of wooden cocktail stick through both caps holds the ball while it is glazed and set; withdraw it before the final aspic coat, or leave it and warn whoever serves the piece. Chilling the assembled balls hard, ideally near freezing, makes them far easier to coat.
The tongue ringCooked beef tongue, sliced about an eighth of an inch thick and stamped with a plain round cutter, gives the base. Pickled or brined tongue from a good butcher is the practical substitute; press the slices flat under a weight while cold so the discs sit level.
Half-set jellyThe final coat is clear aspic at the point where it just begins to thicken on a spoon. Spoon it over in two thin passes rather than one thick one, chilling between, and catch the drippings to remelt and strain.
Yield and useThe original gives no count because it depends on the platter. Reckon on eight to twelve of these around a standard cold galantine or ham, and build them the day they are served — mushroom flesh weeps and the glaze dulls with keeping.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer put *The Epicurean* together in 1894 out of some thirty years at Delmonico's, and the long chapter of garnishings for cold dishes is the clearest surviving record of how a nineteenth-century American grand buffet was actually assembled. Nothing here is meant to be eaten on its own: these are architectural components, made in multiples to ring a *socle* or a cold galantine, and the point of the truffle disc set inside a white egg ring set on a pink tongue ring is contrast read from six feet away. Chaudfroid — literally "hot-cold," a sauce made hot and served cold — is generally traced to French practice of the late eighteenth century, and by Ranhofer's day it was the standard vehicle for glazing anything destined for the cold table. The whole idiom depended on a brigade with time and a larder full of aspic, and it faded as those kitchens did; what survives of it now is mostly in competition cookery, where the same coating temperatures still apply.