No. 594

Chaudfroid Brown and Game

Chaudfroid Brun et Chaudfroid de Gibier

Put into a saucepan, one pint of very clear well-colored espagnole sauce (No. 414), reduce it with some veal blond (No. 423), and dilute with half its quantity of aspic jelly (No. 103). Boil up the sauce and remove it at once to the side of the fire, in order to despumate it for ten minutes, skimming it well in the meantime; then take it off entirely and pass through a tammy. Before using try a little to find out whether it coats properly; if not strong enough add some gelatine.

Game Chaudfroid.-Add one pint of game essence (No. 389) to half a pint of sauterne wine, moisten with game stock (No. 195), and add one quart of well-reduced espagnole sauce (No. 414), despumate and stir in one pint of jelly. The white wine may be replaced by Madeira.

← No. 593 Chaudford, Bechamel Cream Sauce, with Tomato Cold Sauces No. 595 Chaudfroid Green or Ravigote →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a coating sauce, not a pouring one: a brown espagnole enriched with stock and set with aspic so it clings to cold poultry, game or galantines in a smooth glaze. Everything depends on the setting strength, so test before you commit it to the food.

The hinge: test the coatChill a spoonful on a cold plate or dip a cold metal spoon. It should set to a firm, sliceable film that does not run; if it slumps, dissolve in a little more gelatine and retest, adding cautiously. Too little and the glaze slides off, too much and it turns rubbery on the tongue.
DespumateA period kitchen term for holding the sauce at a bare tremble at the edge of the heat so scum and fat rise to be skimmed away. It is what makes a chaudfroid glossy rather than cloudy; the recipe allows ten minutes of patient skimming.
TammyA tammy cloth was a worsted straining cloth wrung between two people. A double layer of damp muslin in a fine sieve does the job, or pass the sauce twice through a chinois.
The cross-referenced componentsEspagnole (No. 414) is the classic brown sauce built on brown roux and veal stock; veal blond (No. 423) is a pale, only lightly coloured veal stock used to concentrate; aspic (No. 103) is a clarified, gelatine-rich savoury jelly. Good commercial demi-glace plus a firm homemade or leaf-gelatine-set stock jelly will stand in, though the sauce will be less deep.
Quantities and yieldThe first sauce starts from a pint of espagnole, reduced, then diluted with half its quantity of jelly, so the finished glaze will be somewhere near a pint and a half (about 700 ml) depending on how far the reduction is taken. The reduction with veal blond is unmeasured on purpose: reduce until the sauce is thick enough to mask a spoon before the jelly goes in.
The game versionGame essence (No. 389) is a heavily reduced game stock; without it, reduce game or dark poultry stock hard to concentrate it. A pint of essence, half a pint of sauterne and a quart of espagnole, with a pint of jelly stirred in, gives a very large batch, easily halved. The recipe allows Madeira in place of the white wine.
Applying itCool the sauce over ice, stirring, until it is the consistency of thin cream, then ladle it over thoroughly chilled food set on a rack. Two thin coats, each set in the refrigerator, look far better than one thick one. Scrapings can be rewarmed gently and reused.
KeepingThis is a stock-and-gelatine preparation with no acid or salt to speak of. Keep it refrigerated, use it within two days, and refrigerate the finished coated dish until it goes to the table.

A Little History

Chaudfroid — literally "hot-cold," a sauce made hot and served cold — belongs to the grand cold buffet of the nineteenth century, when a dining room's reputation rested on glazed hams, mirrored aspic platters and decorated galantines. The name is often traced to an eighteenth-century French kitchen accident in which a dish held back from the table was found to be good cold, though that story is traditional rather than documented. Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working reference for a brigade, which is why the entry reads as a chain of cross-references rather than a standalone recipe: espagnole, veal blond, game essence and aspic were all standing preparations somewhere on the range, and the cook's job was to combine and skim them correctly. The brown and game versions here are the counterparts to the white chaudfroids built on béchamel or velouté, the dark glaze being reserved for game birds, venison and dark-fleshed poultry where a pale coating would look wrong.