No. 679

Chicken Liver Garnishing in Cases or Croustades

Garniture de Foies de Volaille en Caisses ou en Croustades.

Choose a pound of very white, fine, and fat chicken livers, mince them well and fry them briskly in butter, moisten with half a gill of Madeira wine and half a pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414); season with salt, pepper and the juice of a lemon. With these prepared livers fill some croustades made with puff paste fragments, or else oiled cases previously dried in the oven, garnishing the bottoms with chicken and fine herb forcemeat (No. 75). Serve a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) with Madeira separate.

← No. 678 Livers a la Vincelas Garnishing Garnishings No. 680 Macedoine Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a garnish, not a course: a rich liver ragout used to fill small pastry or paper cases set around a larger roast or entrée. The cross-references to Ranhofer's numbered sauces are the main obstacle.

The measurementsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of Madeira is 2 fl oz, or 4 tablespoons. Half a pint of espagnole is 1 cup, which for a pound of minced liver gives a thick, spoonable filling rather than a sauce.
Espagnole and half-glazeNo. 414 is a brown sauce built on veal stock, mirepoix and roux; No. 413 is demi-glace, espagnole reduced with more stock until it coats. A good reduced veal or beef stock thickened lightly stands in for both, and the demi-glace served separately should be finished with a splash of Madeira off the heat.
Do not overcook the liversThis is the hinge. "Fry them briskly" means high heat and a short time in a wide pan so the mince sears rather than stews; minced liver held past the point where the pink goes is grainy and bitter. Sear, then add the wine and sauce and only warm through.
Choosing liversRanhofer's "very white, fine, and fat" describes the pale livers of heavily fed birds, which you will rarely see now. Buy firm, glossy livers, trim connective tissue, and discard any piece stained yellow-green by bile, which will make the whole batch bitter.
Lemon lastThe lemon juice goes in at the end, with the seasoning, as the recipe orders it. Its job here is to cut a pound of liver and a cup of brown sauce.
The cases"Oiled cases" are stiff paper cases brushed with oil and dried in the oven, which Ranhofer does not time or temper; a slow oven until they hold their shape and do not soak through is the aim. Puff-paste croustades made from trimmings want a hot oven until fully dry inside, then hollowed.
The forcemeat liningNo. 75 is a chicken and fine herb forcemeat. The recipe says only to garnish the bottoms of the cases with it before the liver mixture goes in.
YieldA pound of livers with a cup of sauce should fill somewhere around sixteen to twenty small cases, though Ranhofer gives no number. Assemble at the last moment and serve hot; the filling stiffens and the cases soften on standing.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the kitchen's working system set down in print, which is why an entry like this one is a numbered part in a machine rather than a standalone dish. Nineteenth-century French service treated garnishings as a category of their own: a roast or a large braise arrived surrounded by small filled cases, and the choice of garnish carried the name of the finished plate. Croustade, from the same root as crust, meant any edible or paper container used this way, and paper cases oiled and dried were the cheap workhorse version of what pastry did more grandly. The use of chicken livers reflects a kitchen that broke down whole birds daily and had a steady supply of offal to convert into something worth charging for; the Madeira and the espagnole are the standard tools for lifting it, Madeira being among the fortified wines much used in American professional kitchens of the period.