No. 640

Aquitaine Garnishing

Garniture a l'Aquitaine

Have a pound of escaloped duck livers sauted in butter; half a pound of small button mushrooms cooked with butter, lemon juice, salt and water; a quarter of a pound of small whole truffles, cooked in Madeira wine; half a pound of pressed beef palate cut cock's-comb shape, warmed in meat glaze (No. 401) and butter. Infuse a stick of Ceylon cinnamon for ten minutes in a gill of Madeira wine; strain this through a napkin into a quart of reduced espagnole sauce (No. 414). Dress the garnishing in clusters, pour over half the sauce and serve the remainder in a separate sauce-boat. This garnishing can be used for entrees; if this be the case, mix the ingredients composing it together in a sautoire with the sauce, and dress them.

← No. 639 Andalouse Garnishing Garnishings No. 641 Barley a la Reine Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a classical garniture rather than a standalone dish: four cooked elements arranged around a roast or braise, bound by a cinnamon-scented espagnole. Ranhofer assumes you already have the sauce and the glaze on hand, which is where most of the work actually lies.

A gillHalf a cup, or 4 fluid ounces. That is the quantity of Madeira infused with the cinnamon, then strained into a full quart of reduced espagnole.
EscalopedHere it means cut into thin, flat slices across the lobe, not scored or crumbed. Duck livers slice cleanly when very cold; sauté them fast in butter so the centres stay pink-rose, as they will sit in hot sauce afterwards.
Beef palateThe lining of the roof of an ox's mouth. Ranhofer's wording ("pressed beef palate") suggests he expected to buy it ready-cooked and pressed; it is very hard to find today outside specialist butchers. It was valued for a firm gelatinous bite, and its role here is texture rather than flavour. Cooked veal sweetbread trimmed to the same shape is the closest practical stand-in; leaving it out costs the garnish little in taste.
Cock's-comb shapeA small pointed crescent with a scalloped edge, cut to imitate the real cockscombs used in older garnitures. The cut is purely decorative and matters only if you are dressing the elements in separate clusters.
Ceylon cinnamonRanhofer names Ceylon cinnamon specifically. Ceylon (true cinnamon) is mild and floral; the cassia sold as plain "cinnamon" in most supermarkets is more aggressive and can overwhelm the Madeira. The recipe asks only for a ten-minute infusion and does not specify how hot the wine should be.
Espagnole and meat glazeNo. 414 is a brown sauce made with a brown roux and brown stock, then reduced; No. 401 is stock reduced to a syrupy glaze. Preparing a quart of reduced espagnole from scratch is a long job. A well-reduced brown stock, lightly thickened, serves the same purpose.
SautoireA straight-sided shallow pan, what most kitchens now call a sauté pan. Used for the entrée version, where everything is folded together in the sauce instead of dressed in clusters.
Timing the assemblyEvery element is cooked separately and only warmed through at the end. Returning the livers to a simmering sauce for more than a minute or two turns them grainy, which is the one failure this garnish is prone to.
YieldThe listed weights come to about two and a quarter pounds of garnish plus a quart of sauce: enough to dress a large roast or braised joint, or to fill out an entree, for a sizeable table. Ranhofer gives no serving number.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its long chapter of garnishings is essentially a catalogue of interchangeable parts for the grand service of the period: a cook chose a garniture by name, and the name told the dining room what would arrive on the platter. Aquitaine, the old duchy of southwestern France, lends its name to preparations of this kind, and the association is with the region's foie gras, duck and Perigord truffles rather than with any single documented dish. The cinnamon steeped in Madeira is the detail that dates it most clearly: sweet spice in a brown meat sauce was still respectable in the 1890s, a survival of an older French style that twentieth-century cooking largely abandoned. Pressed beef palate, likewise, seems to have been readily obtainable in Ranhofer's New York and has since largely vanished from the trade.