No. 743

Fat Liver Salpicon

Salpicon de Foies-Gras

Braise fourteen ounces of fat duck's or geese livers in a matignon (No. 406) (this is their weight after being cooked), leave them to get cold, and then cut them up into small dice, also four ounces of truffles, and two of ham. Serve with a half-glaze sauce (No. 413).

← No. 742 Salpicon Garnishing, Columbian Garnishings No. 744 Flavignan Salpicon →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a component rather than a dish: a diced mixture meant to fill bouchées, tartlets, timbales and cromesquis, or to garnish a large roast or a cold piece. Ranhofer assumes you have the numbered sub-recipes to hand, so the whole thing turns on knowing what matignon and half-glaze actually are.

The hinge: gentle heatFoie gras rendered hard is foie gras wasted. The braise should be barely trembling, well under a boil. Anything approaching a boil melts out the fat and leaves grey, grainy dice.
Matignon (No. 406)A fondue of finely cut carrot, onion, celery and raw ham with thyme and bay, sweated in butter and moistened with Madeira. Unlike a mirepoix it is cooked soft enough to be eaten, and here it is the braising bed and the whole seasoning of the liver.
Half-glaze (No. 413)Demi-glace: espagnole reduced with brown stock, sometimes finished with Madeira or sherry. A good reduced veal stock stands in. Warm the salpicon in it off direct heat; boiling the sauce with the foie gras will break the fat out.
Fourteen ounces after cookingRanhofer is explicit that the weight is post-braise. You will need appreciably more raw liver than that to land at fourteen ounces, since a foie gras loses a good deal of weight in rendered fat.
TrufflesFour ounces is a large quantity by modern reckoning. Nineteenth-century kitchens used preserved black truffles in tins, which is a fair substitute; fresh winter black truffle, sliced then diced, is better. Truffle oil is not a substitute here — it has no texture and the dice matter.
Dice sizeA salpicon is cut small and even, about ¼ inch. The pieces should read as three distinct things on the tongue, so cut the ham and truffle to match the liver rather than mincing them.
Cut it coldThe instruction to let the livers get cold is not optional. Warm foie gras smears under the knife; chilled firm, it cuts into clean cubes.
YieldTwenty ounces of solids, roughly 1¼ lb bound in sauce — enough to fill about two dozen small bouchées or to garnish a large centrepiece.
SourcingProduction and sale of foie gras is restricted in some jurisdictions. Where it is unavailable, a whole duck liver or a good parfait cut cold will give the dice, though not the same texture.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the working system of that restaurant set down in one enormous cross-referenced volume — which is why this entry reads as three line items and two numbers. Salpicon comes into French cooking from Spanish salpicón, a dish of chopped or diced meat; by the nineteenth century in France it meant specifically a fine even dice of one or more cooked ingredients bound in a sauce, used to fill pastry cases and croquettes. The pairing of foie gras, truffle and ham was the standard luxury register of the period, and the fact that Ranhofer files it under garnishings rather than entrées says something about how such a house worked: a pound of braised foie gras was a building block, not the point of the plate.