No. 2617

Young Turkey Breasts, Gustave Dore

Filets de Dindonneau a la Gustave Dore

Raise the breasts from two turkeys; remove the minion fillets and the skin, and saute them in butter and lemon juice; set them separately under a weight to cool, then pare and cover over twice with white chaudfroid (No. 596), the same as for chaudfroid of turkey Perigord (No. 2462). Decorate with cuts of truffles, and cover with half-set jelly. Pare the four minion fillets, remove the light skin, and the sinews, and range them in a buttered sautoir, one beside the other, shaping them like crescents; cover over with buttered paper, and poach in a hot oven for a few moments, then cool them off and coat over with a brown chaudfroid (No. 594). Cut some slices of unsmoked red beef tongue three-sixteenths of an inch thick, and from these pare slices the same shape as the minion fillets, and cover them with jelly. Dress the turkey breasts on a cut-out rice support, and around a pad of bread covered with green butter (No. 583); decorate around this support with finely chopped jelly, and on it lay the minion fillets and tongue intercalated, and outside of the jelly place some triangular-shaped croutons (No. 2442), cut much longer than their width. On top of the support have a vase made of vegetables, filled with small stuffed mushrooms, as explained in No. 2517.

← No. 2616 Turkey or Goose in Daube Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2618 Wild Boar's Head, Decorated →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's cold buffet piece from 1894, built in stages over two days. The recipe is a set of instructions to a professional garde-manger and assumes you already have the chaudfroid sauces, aspic and croutons in hand; the cross-references are doing most of the work.

The hinge: everything must be cold and dryChaudfroid will not adhere to warm or damp meat, and it sets in a narrow window, going on when it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Chill the pressed breasts thoroughly, blot them, and coat in two thin passes rather than one thick one, as the recipe directs.
Minion filletsThese are the two small tenderloin strips lying under each breast, sold now as turkey tenderloins. Four of them means two birds' worth, as the recipe assumes.
"Poach in a hot oven for a few moments"The book gives no temperature, and the point is speed: the fillets are thin, buttered and papered, and want only enough heat to firm through. Turkey breast is safe at 165F and dries out badly past it, so a probe is worth more than a clock here.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow sauté pan. Any wide ovenproof skillet will do; the fillets need to lie side by side without overlapping so they take their crescent shape.
White and brown chaudfroidNo. 596 is a velouté-based sauce set with aspic; No. 594 is the same idea on an espagnole base. Both need real gelatinous stock to set, so a well-reduced homemade turkey or veal stock is not optional.
Unsmoked red beef tonguePickled (brine-cured, unsmoked) tongue, which reads bright pink when sliced. Delis still sell it cooked; three-sixteenths of an inch is a hair under 5 mm, thin enough to cut cleanly with a cutter but thick enough to stand up in the arrangement.
Green butterNo. 583 is butter pounded with blanched spinach or herbs and sieved, used here as a coating for the bread pad, not as a spread. It exists purely for colour against the white chaudfroid.
The rice supportA base of cooked rice pounded to a paste, moulded, chilled and cut to shape a Victorian structural device rather than something anyone eats. A shaped block of firm mousseline or a plain bread socle serves the same purpose.
Yield and holdingTwo turkeys' worth of breast will serve twenty or more as part of a cold table. Assembled aspic work holds a few hours at buffet temperature at most; keep it refrigerated until service.

A Little History

The dish is named for Gustave Doré (1832-1883), the French illustrator of Dante, Rabelais and the Bible, and belongs to a whole class of nineteenth-century dishes christened after artists, singers and writers whose names would flatter a menu. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), filled his chapter on cold garnishings with constructions of this kind: meat coated in chaudfroid, glazed with aspic, inlaid with truffle, and mounted on inedible supports of rice or bread to give it height on the buffet. The logic is display before appetite, in an era when a large cold dish was carried to the table whole and carved down in view of the room. Turkey suited the purpose because the breast is pale, uniform and holds a flat surface for decoration — the same reason it appears again in Ranhofer's chaudfroid of turkey Périgord, cross-referenced here so the cook need not be told twice.