No. 2574

Cold Salmis of Partridges

Salmis Froid de Perdreaux

Roast two partridges, cut them up, being careful to have all the pieces nicely pared, and to suppress the skin, leaving on as little bone as possible; range these when prepared on a small baking sheet and keep them in a cool place; have also a round serving dish laid aside on the ice. Prepare a salmis sauce (No. 536) with the parings and bones; strain it into a small saucepan to cool, while stirring occasionally, then incorporate into it slowly two spoonfuls of Madeira wine and several more of good cold jelly (No. 103); beat this on ice to thicken as a chaudfroid sauce. Dip each piece of game singly into this sauce to envelop thoroughly; drain and dress in a pyramid form in the center of a cold dish, reserving the choicest pieces for the top; leave the entree on ice for another quarter of an hour. Garnish the wings and legs with paper frills (No. 10), surround the base of the pyramid with chopped jelly or croutons of jelly (No. 2442), and small glazed truffles laid in cases.

← No. 2573 Saddle of Venison a la Harder Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2575 Cold Salmis of Quails a la Balzac →

For the Modern Kitchen

A chaud-froid in all but name: roast game jointed cold, coated in a jellied game sauce, and built into a pyramid. The whole thing lives or dies on the temperature of the sauce at the moment you dip.

The hinge: sauce viscosityBeat the sauce over ice only until it coats a spoon and just barely flows, roughly the consistency of heavy cream. Too warm and it slides off the meat in streaks; too cold and it sets in the bowl and goes lumpy. If it seizes, warm it briefly to melt it out and start the chilling again.
Cross-referencesNo. 536 is Ranhofer's salmis sauce, a brown game sauce made with the bones and trimmings and strained; No. 103 is his jelly. A well-reduced brown game stock clarified and set with gelatin serves for both; the jelly must be firm enough to hold at cool room temperature, not merely thick.
"Spoonfuls"An unqualified spoonful here is usually taken as a tablespoon. Two of Madeira is definite; "several more" of jelly is not, and the quantity is genuinely open. Add the melted jelly gradually and judge by set: pull a teaspoon of the mixture onto a cold plate and see whether it firms in a few minutes.
The birdsTwo partridges yield a modest entree for two, or four small portions as part of a larger cold table. Farmed partridge and squab are both sold now; two poussins or four quail work in the same construction. Roast hot and fast and take the breast to 165F, the safe finished temperature for poultry and game birds, since game served cold turns dry and mealy if it was overcooked warm.
"On the ice"Wherever the text says ice, it means a bowl or tray set in ice water, or a refrigerator at 40F or below. Chill the serving dish as instructed, since a room-temperature plate softens the coating from underneath and the pyramid slumps.
Paring the piecesThe skin comes off deliberately; the sauce is the finish, and skin under aspic goes flabby and grey. Trim each joint to a clean shape and take the bones down as far as the piece will hold together, because every irregular edge shows through the glaze.
GarnishesPaper frills (No. 10) are cut cuffs slipped over the exposed leg and wing bones, still sold as cutlet frills. Chopped jelly means aspic set firm, diced, and scattered; croutons of jelly are neat cut shapes. Glazed truffles can be replaced with sauteed mushroom caps brushed with aspic, with the understanding that the effect is visual.
Timing and holdingDip, drain, build, then give it the quarter hour on ice to set. It can be held a few hours refrigerated, loosely tented so nothing touches the surface, but the coating dulls and weeps by the next day.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a long chapter of cold dishes built for the buffet and the ball supper, where food had to look composed for an hour on a sideboard. A salmis is properly a hot dish of already-roasted game finished in a sauce made from its own bones and trimmings, the name generally traced to the same root as salmigondis, a hash or medley; here Ranhofer takes the sauce, jellies it with Madeira and aspic, and turns the whole preparation into a chaud-froid, which is the standard nineteenth-century trick for putting a sauced dish on a cold table. Partridge belonged to the game trade that supplied American restaurants heavily in this period, and the pyramid of coated joints crowned with truffles and paper frills is characteristic of the architectural cold work that the kitchen brigades of the era could afford to spend a whole afternoon on.