No. 895

Croustades a la Castillane

Prepare a very thick chestnut puree as already described in the garnishings (No. 712), with it fill some six-sided molds previously cooled in ice-water and drained before filling, when perfectly cool dip them into very hot water to unmold. Bread-crumb them in cracker dust, beaten eggs and bread-crumbs, smooth the surfaces, and mark an incision with a pastry cutter three-quarters of an inch in diameter; fry them to a fine color, remove the cover and empty out the insides to refill with beef tenderloin cut in quarter inch dice pieces and sauted in butter with some mushrooms cut exactly the same, and a brown and Marsala wine sauce (No. 492). Instead of replacing the lid, cover the aperture with a small round celery croquette three-quarters of an inch across, that has been made with braised celery cut in small squares and mixed with veloute sauce (No. 415), and when cold bread-crumbed and fried.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A three-part construction: a fried chestnut-purée case, a tenderloin and mushroom filling in Marsala sauce, and a celery croquette used as a stopper. Ranhofer assumes you have his numbered sauces on hand, so plan the components in order before shaping anything.

The hinge: the purée must be stiff and coldA chestnut purée loose enough to pour will collapse in the fryer. Cook it down until a spoon drawn through leaves a clean track, then chill the moulded shapes thoroughly — an hour in the refrigerator, or longer — before breading. Everything after this step depends on the case holding its shape.
Cross-referenced numbersNo. 712 is the chestnut purée garnish, No. 492 a brown sauce finished with Marsala, No. 415 a velouté. In modern terms: chestnuts simmered soft and passed through a sieve with butter and a little stock; a demi-glace deglazed with Marsala; and a white stock sauce thickened with blond roux. Any competent version of each will serve.
Cracker dustDried, finely rolled soda or water crackers. It is drier and coarser than breadcrumb and gives the first coat something to grip. Panko or plain dried crumbs stand in, though the crust is slightly less crisp.
UnmouldingThe brief dip in hot water loosens the surface film only. Count seconds, not more — the purée softens fast, and a slumped mould cannot be squared up again.
Marking the lidThe three-quarter-inch cutter scores a circle only, deep enough to cut the crust but not through the case. After frying, that scored disc lifts out cleanly and the soft interior is scooped away, leaving a shell.
Frying350–360°F. The interior is already cooked; you are colouring the crust and setting it. Anything hotter browns the crumb before the coating has bonded and the case splits at the seams.
The fillingQuarter-inch dice of tenderloin want a hard, fast sauté — under a minute in hot butter — then off the heat. They will sit in warm sauce inside a warm case and continue to cook. Cut the mushrooms to the same size, as the original insists; the uniformity is the point of the dish.
The celery stopperA second croquette, made from braised celery bound in velouté, chilled firm, breaded and fried separately. Make these first so they are ready when the croustades come out; they are small and cook in well under a minute.
Yield and serviceRanhofer gives no count, and no mould size either; the only stated dimension is the three-quarter-inch aperture, so the mould must be comfortably larger than that. Figure one croustade per person as a hot entree, and serve immediately, since the crust softens from the inside within minutes of filling.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after directing the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York across two separate spells between 1862 and 1896, and the book is less a domestic manual than a professional archive — over three thousand numbered preparations, each assuming a brigade able to cook the sauces referenced by number. A croustade is simply an edible case, and the nineteenth-century French repertoire built them out of everything from hollowed bread to fried duchesse potato; here the case itself is chestnut, a vegetable that appears throughout the book as purée, garnish and stuffing. The name à la Castillane follows the era's habit of attaching a geographic epithet to a garnish or presentation — Castile, in this case — though such labels were often decorative rather than descriptive, and the combination of chestnut, tenderloin and Marsala owes more to Parisian kitchen convention than to anything Spanish. What the dish really records is the logic of a restaurant that could afford to fry one croquette purely to plug the hole in another.