No. 901

Croustades a la Piedmontese

Croustades a la Piemontaise

Set a quart of broth or water on the fire, and when it boils, drip into it like rain, six ounces of semolino, let it cook slowly for twenty minutes, then incorporate into it one ounce of butter and four spoonfuls of grated parmesan, also a little salt and nutmeg. Lay in cold ice water some six-sided molds (Fig. 221), take them out one by one, and fill them with the above preparation; leave them to stand on ice till cold, then unmold, dip them in beaten eggs, and roll in powdered crackers, then again in beaten eggs and afterward in bread-crumbs, smooth the surfaces with the blade of a knife, and mark on top with a round three-quarter of an inch pastry cutter; fry them a fine color, remove the covers, and empty out the insides; fill these with a salpicon of truffles, mushrooms, beef palates, duck livers, small quenelles and a little brown Madeira sauce (No. 492). Replace the covers, and serve them dressed on folded napkins.

For Polenta Croustades proceed exactly as for the semolino, finishing them the same; fill the insides with white truffles and quarter inch squares of sweetbreads, and cover with an espagnole sauce (No. 414) reduced with dry mushrooms and tomato essence added.

← No. 900 Croustades Perretti Hot Side Dishes No. 902 Croustades a la Morgan or with Scrambled Egg →

For the Modern Kitchen

A semolina gnocchi mixture, chilled in molds, breaded twice, fried, then hollowed out and used as a container for a rich salpicon. The hinge is the chilling: the semolina must be set solid and cold all the way through or the shells collapse in the fat.

SemolinoThis is semolina, the coarse durum wheat meal sold for gnocchi alla romana and for pasta making. Six ounces to a quart of liquid gives a stiff porridge; sprinkle it in slowly, as instructed, or it lumps.
SpoonfulsRanhofer's "spoonful" in savoury work is generally taken to be a tablespoon, which would make four spoonfuls of parmesan about 1/4 cup grated. A quart of broth is 4 cups; an ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons.
The moldsThe recipe calls for six-sided molds (Fig. 221); no size is given. Straight-sided metal timbale molds, dariole cups or even a muffin tin work; chilling them in ice water, as directed, helps the set semolina drop out cleanly.
Chill properly"Leave them to stand on ice till cold" means thoroughly cold and firm, not merely cool. Two hours in the refrigerator, or overnight, is realistic. A soft centre will burst the crust in the fryer.
Powdered crackersCracker crumbs from plain unsalted soda crackers, rolled fine. The first coat is cracker, the second breadcrumb; the double egging is deliberate and gives the shell enough strength to be hollowed.
Frying"A fine color" is deep golden, about three minutes at 350-360F. The semolina is already cooked, so you are only setting the crust.
Beef palatesThe lining of an ox palate, once a standard garnish meat, boiled and peeled before dicing. It is no longer sold in most places; more mushroom, or diced cooked veal or tongue, fills the same textural role in the salpicon.
Duck livers and trufflesA few chicken livers stand in for duck livers with no real loss. Fresh truffle is optional rather than essential here since the filling is bound with a strongly reduced Madeira sauce; the polenta version specifies white truffles, which are associated with Piedmont.
Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no mold size or count, so yield depends entirely on the molds used. Fill them at the last moment: the sauce softens the shells quickly.

A Little History

The croustade is a French device rather than an Italian one: a fried or baked case, hollowed and refilled, that let a nineteenth-century kitchen serve a warm ragout of trimmings with dignity. The filling here, a salpicon of truffle, mushroom, palates, livers and quenelles bound in Madeira sauce, uses exactly the sort of small diced offcuts a large restaurant kitchen would have to hand. The numbered cross-references to sauces No. 492 and No. 414 show what The Epicurean (1894) really was: not a book of standalone recipes but the working system of a brigade, where nothing was written out twice.