No. 825

Tartlets of Game, Lobster, Salmon or Nonpareil

Tartelettes de Gibier, Homard, Saumon ou Nonpareil

These are small round or oval tartlets, made of a very thin foundation paste (No. 135), and the insides garnished with buttered paper, and filled in with rice. Cook them in a slack oven, empty them, egg over the edge, and set them in a quick oven to color. Cut some roast game in small dice, with an equal quantity of mushrooms, and bind with a little light chaufroid, season well and serve the tartlets on folded napkins.

Lobster and Salmon Tartlets.—Use either round or oval tartlet crusts, the same as for the above, garnish the insides with either salmon or lobster cut in dice, and some mushrooms, capers, fine herbs, salt, pepper, lemon juice and olive oil; dress them on folded napkins.

Nonpareil Tartlets.—Have either round or oval tartlet crusts; cut some tunny fish and anchovies in three-sixteenth inch dice, also some beetroot, lobster and pickled cucumbers the same size, stoned olives cut across in thin slices, shrimp tails, three-sixteenth inch dice of celery knob; season and fill the tartlets with this; dredge over the tops with truffles, parsley, lobster coral, and pistachio nuts, all chopped up separately and minutely, and cover over with partly thickened jelly.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Three cold canapé fillings sharing one component: a batch of small blind-baked pastry shells. Nearly all the work is in the shells and the aspic, and both can be done a day ahead.

The hinge: bake the shells fully dryLine the tins with paper, fill with rice, and bake low until the pastry is set and pale, then empty, brush the rims with egg wash and return briefly to a hot oven for color. A shell that is even slightly underbaked will go soft within minutes of meeting a moist, oiled filling.
Oven temperaturesA slack oven is usually reckoned at roughly 300-325F for the weighted blind bake, and a quick oven at roughly 425-450F for coloring the egged edges. These are modern approximations; the recipe gives no times, so watch the color.
Foundation paste (No. 135)Ranhofer's foundation paste is a plain lining pastry rather than puff. A plain short pastry rolled as thin as it will take, per the recipe's 'very thin', will behave much the same way.
Chaud-froidA "light chaufroid" here is a velouté or white sauce with dissolved gelatin, cooled until it just coats. It is used as a binder, not a glaze, so keep it slack enough to bind the dice without setting them into a solid block.
Partly thickened jellyThe aspic that covers the Nonpareil tartlets should be chilled to the consistency of raw egg white before spooning on. Fully liquid aspic soaks into the pastry; fully set aspic will not level.
Ingredients to translateCelery knob is celeriac. Tunny is tuna; oil-packed is closer to the original than water-packed. Lobster coral is the roe, found in a female lobster; chopped cooked egg yolk is sometimes used in its place.
Fish should be cookedThe salmon and lobster are assumed to be already cooked -- poached salmon, boiled lobster -- as the game is 'roast game'. Nothing in these tartlets receives further heat, so do not read the recipe as licence to dice raw salmon.
Timing and yieldFill at the last possible moment; shells can sit a day in a tin, fillings a few hours covered in the refrigerator. The recipe gives no quantities, so yield depends entirely on your tin size and how much paste you make.

A Little History

This entry belongs to the cold side dishes -- the hors-d'œuvre froids -- of Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Small filled pastry cases were a convenient vehicle for expensive cooked odds and ends: yesterday's roast grouse, the trimmings of a poached salmon, a claw of lobster. "Nonpareil" means without equal, and here the separately chopped truffle, parsley, coral and pistachio dredged over the top suggest what the word was doing -- the deliberate contrast of four colors, minutely cut and never mixed together. The reliance on aspic and chaud-froid throughout this section reflects a kitchen with a constant supply of long-simmered veal and fish stock on hand, and a dining room that expected cold food to arrive glazed and architectural.