No. 2725

Cepes Minced in Croustades

Cepes Eminces en Croustades

Trim some bread croutons into ovals three inches long by two inches wide and half an inch thick; slit them all around an eighth of an inch from the edges and fry in clarified butter; remove the tops and empty them completely. Peel some cepes, cut them in two through their thickness, salt over and leave them for twenty minutes, then mince them finely and fry in butter; drain this off and transfer them to a saucepan, adding some sour cream; finish cooking, then mingle in a little bechamel sauce (No. 409) and meat glaze (No. 402); add a small bit of finely cut-up green fennel and fill the croustades with this preparation; serve at once, very hot.

← No. 2724 Cepes Baked with Cream Mushrooms & Truffles No. 2726 Cepes Stuffed →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a kitchen with béchamel and meat glaze already standing on the stove; the work here is really two separate jobs, the bread cases and the mushroom filling. Neither is difficult, but the salting step is what makes the filling taste of mushroom rather than water.

Cèpes are porciniCepes are Boletus edulis, sold fresh in autumn as porcini and dried year-round. If using dried, soak about 2 oz in warm water for 30 minutes, squeeze dry, and skip the salting step; the soaking liquid can be reduced and added with the meat glaze.
The salting is the hingeHalving the caps, salting, and standing them 20 minutes pulls out a surprising amount of liquid. Blot them dry before mincing, or the butter will steam rather than fry and the filling will turn grey and slack.
Croustades, not baked casserolesThese are hollowed fried bread cases. Use a dense white loaf, cut ovals about 3 by 2 inches and 1/2 inch thick, score a lid 1/8 inch inside the edge, fry in clarified butter until golden on both sides, then lift the lid and pull out the crumb with a small spoon. They can be fried several hours ahead and warmed in a 300F oven.
Clarified butter mattersWhole butter will brown and speckle the bread at frying temperature. Clarify it, or use ghee.
Sour creamNineteenth-century sour cream was naturally soured and thick. Modern full-fat sour cream works; add it off a hard boil and let it reduce gently, as low-fat versions will split.
Béchamel and meat glazeBéchamel and meat glaze -- Recipe No. 409 is Ranhofer's béchamel; No. 402 is glace de viande, stock reduced to a syrup. A tablespoon or two of thick béchamel binds the mince, and a teaspoon of good demi-glace or reduced beef stock stands in for the glaze. Both are seasoning here, not the substance of the dish.
Green fennelThis means the fresh feathery fronds, not the bulb or the seed. Dill is the closest substitute if fennel tops are unavailable; use it sparingly, as it is meant to be a background note.
Yield and timingThe recipe gives no quantities; figure roughly 1 lb of cleaned fresh cèpes for about eight croustades, enough for four as a first course. Fill only at the moment of serving; the bread softens within minutes of meeting the cream.

A Little History

This is from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast record of what he cooked during his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in a run of numbered cèpe preparations that shows how seriously that kitchen took wild mushrooms. Cèpe is the French name, generally traced to the Gascon cep for a tree trunk, for the boletus that Italians call porcino; in Ranhofer's day a fine-dining kitchen still depended largely on foraged and imported dried fungi. The croustade gives the cook a fried bread vessel doing the work of pastry at a fraction of the labor, one that could be prepared in advance while the filling was made to order.