No. 838

Attereaux of Fat Livers

Attereaux de Foies-Gras

Cook some foies-gras cut into one-inch squares and three-eighths of an inch thick pieces, lay them in a vessel, and add an equal quantity of the same sized squares of cooked red beef tongue; season with paprika, meat glaze (No. 402), and finely chopped truffles; sprinkle over a few spoonfuls of Villeroi sauce (No. 560), sufficient to cover, and run through these pieces of liver and tongue small wooden or metal skewers; when cold pare and roll them in bread-crumbs, dip in beaten eggs, and bread-crumb them once more, smoothing the bread-crumbs, then plunge them into hot frying fat and fry them a fine color; dress on folded napkins and surround with slices of lemon.

← No. 837 Attereaux of Chicken a la d'Antin Hot Side Dishes No. 839 Attereaux of Oysters →

For the Modern Kitchen

An attereau is a skewer of cooked morsels sealed in a thick sauce, chilled until firm, breaded and deep-fried. Everything depends on the coating setting hard before it meets the fat.

The hinge: chill until solidVilleroi sauce is a very thick veloute or allemande enriched with egg yolk; it is applied warm and the skewers must then be chilled until firm to the touch, which is what the recipe's "when cold" is asking for. Breading a soft skewer risks the coating splitting and the sauce leaking into the fryer.
Villeroi sauce (No. 560)A reduced allemande, typically finished with mushroom and/or truffle essence and cooked down until it coats a spoon heavily. Any modern thick, well-reduced veloute bound with yolk will do the same job; it is a glue, not a table sauce.
Meat glaze (No. 402)Glace de viande: brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets to a rubbery jelly when cold. Commercial demi-glace or a good reduced veal stock can stand in; use it by the half-teaspoon, as commercial versions in particular are very salty.
"Cook some foies-gras"Ranhofer assumes raw lobes, gently poached or roasted, then cooled and cut. Tinned or vacuum-packed foie gras mi-cuit is already cooked and can be cut cold; it is soft, so cube it straight from the refrigerator and work quickly.
AvailabilityFoie gras production and sale are restricted or banned in several jurisdictions. Where it is unavailable, the same construction is usually made with chicken livers or a firm mousse-style pâté, which cube more reliably in any case.
Red beef tongueCooked, peeled, pressed tongue, sold at delicatessens as a cured pink cold cut. Its firmness is doing structural work here against the soft liver, so do not swap in something equally soft.
SkewersShort wooden skewers, trimmed so they sit inside the crumb crust or protrude only enough to lift by. Metal ones conduct heat into the fat and get too hot to touch; wood is easier.
FryingThe recipe says only "hot frying fat"; modern deep-frying practice for this is around 350-375F. The interiors are already cooked, so you are only setting the crust and warming through: two to three minutes, or the sauce softens and bursts out.
Yield and serviceThe folded napkin is period presentation for absorbing fat; a rack and a plain plate serve the same purpose.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down that repertoire in full, numbered and cross-referenced like a code of law. Attereaux — from the French hâtereau, a small spit, by the traditional derivation — were a standard hors-d'oeuvre chaud of the classical French kitchen, and the technique of masking cooked morsels in a stiff sauce before breading and frying is what the trade called à la Villeroi, generally traced to the eighteenth-century Villeroy household. Combining foie gras with tongue and truffle in something meant to be eaten in two bites is characteristic of the late-nineteenth-century American luxury table, where expense was demonstrated by the density of costly ingredients rather than the size of the portion.