No. 842

Attereaux of Turkey or Game

Attereaux de Dindon ou de Gibier

Take the white meat from a roast turkey or some game, and cut it into slices three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness; with a round cutter remove pieces three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Prepare some truffles and mushrooms half an inch in diameter, by an eighth in thickness; mix all these with an allemande sauce (No. 407), with cooked fine herbs added, and run them alternately on to small silver skewers; bread-crumb them as above and fry.

← No. 841 Attereaux of Sweetbreads a la Moderne Hot Side Dishes No. 843 Bateaux of Fat Livers, Russian Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A leftover dish dressed as a side course: cooked turkey or game, bound with a thick sauce, skewered, crumbed and fried. The hinge is the chilling — if the sauce coating is not cold and firm, the attereaux fall apart in the fat.

The sauce is glue, not gravyAllemande (No. 407) is a velouté finished with an egg-yolk liaison, reduced until it coats heavily. Mix the discs into it warm, thread the skewers, then refrigerate them flat until the coating is set solid, at least an hour, before breading.
"Bread-crumb them as above"Ranhofer is pointing back to the breading given in the preceding attereaux recipes: egg wash, then fine dry crumbs. The crumb layer is what keeps the sauce inside.
SkewersAttelettes were short ornamental silver skewers, served in the dish. Metal cocktail skewers or 4-inch bamboo work; trim bamboo so it does not scorch, and warn diners the skewer is not a handle for a hot fried item.
Sizes in modern termsThree-sixteenths of an inch is about 5 mm; the three-quarter-inch rounds are about 2 cm across. Truffle and mushroom pieces at half an inch by an eighth are roughly 12 mm wide and 3 mm thick — thinner than the meat, so they read as seasoning rather than filler.
FryingDeep-fry at 360-375F for one to two minutes, only until the crust is deep gold. Everything inside is already cooked; longer frying simply melts the binding sauce and splits the coating.
Fines herbes, cooked"Cooked fine herbs" means Ranhofer's cooked preparation of chopped shallot and mushroom sweated in butter with parsley, not raw chopped herbs. Cook out the moisture or the sauce will loosen.
TrufflesFresh truffles the size specified are a luxury purchase; good preserved truffle, or thin slices of dark rehydrated dried morel or porcini, keep the intended contrast of colour and perfume.
Yield and serviceService -- Serve immediately on a folded napkin, with a sharp sauce such as a tomato or périgueux offered separately.

A Little History

Attereaux (also hâtereaux, from the old French haste, a spit) are the classical kitchen's answer to the problem of yesterday's roast: small uniform pieces of cooked meat threaded on a skewer, masked with a stiff sauce, crumbed and fried so the whole thing eats as a crisp cylinder. Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, printed a run of them in The Epicurean (1894) among the hot side dishes, the course of small made-up plates that separated the fish from the roast in a long service à la russe menu. The recipe assumes what a nineteenth-century professional kitchen always had on hand — a roast bird already carved for the dining room, a stockpot of velouté, and truffles — and turns the leftover breast into something a paying customer would not recognise as leftovers. The silver skewers were part of the point: attelettes were sold as ornamental tableware, sometimes with cast finials, and going to table in the dish they signalled that the food had been assembled by hand rather than simply dished up.