No. 905

Crusts with Foies-Gras

Croutes au Foies-Gras

From a kitchen loaf (Fig. 210) cut quarter inch thick slices and from these obtain twenty oval-shaped crusts, each three inches long by two and a quarter inches wide; prepare a baking liver forcemeat (No. 64) with fat pork and aromatic herbs; when cold pound it with a few parings of cooked foies-gras; rub this through a sieve. Put into a vessel about two gills of this puree, beat it with a spoon incorporating slowly into it three or four spoonfuls of good brown sauce (No. 414) reduced with Madeira till succulent and thick; add to the preparation a third as much cooked foies-gras cut in small dice and two chopped truffles. Take up the crusts one by one, dip them into a mixture of egg-yolks and raw cream that has been strained through a sieve and steep without deforming them, then cover the surfaces with a part of the above preparation, smooth it into a dome-shape, and take up the crusts with a palette to dip them entirely in beaten eggs; let drain and immerse in white breadcrumbs, and plunge a few at the time into plenty of hot frying fat to attain a fine color; drain, dress on a folded napkin and serve.

← No. 904 Crusts d'Henin, Morton, Chamberlain, or a la Hot Side Dishes No. 906 Crusts of Woodcock →

For the Modern Kitchen

A croquette in reverse: the crisp coating goes around a bread base topped with a dome of liver puree rather than around a loose filling. Nearly everything here depends on the puree being stiff enough to hold that dome through two coatings and the fryer.

Two gillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup of liver puree. With the sauce, diced foie gras and truffles worked in you finish with a little under a pint of mixture, which spreads out to roughly a tablespoonful or so on each of the twenty crusts.
The cross-referencesNo. 64 is Ranhofer's baking liver forcemeat, a liver and fat-pork forcemeat baked in a mould; No. 414 is his brown sauce (espagnole), and a good reduced demi-glace stands in for it. The forcemeat must be made in advance, since the recipe pounds it cold.
Reduce the sauce hardThe three or four spoonfuls of Madeira-reduced sauce are there for flavour and gloss, not moisture. If the sauce goes in loose the puree will slump off the crust in the fat. It should be thick enough to hold a ridge from the spoon.
The egg-yolk and cream dipThis is not a coating but a soak: it softens and enriches the dry bread base so it eats like custard rather than toast. Dip briefly and let it absorb without going floppy, or the crusts will tear when you lift them with the palette.
Two separate egg stagesThe yolk-and-cream mixture for the bread and the beaten whole egg for the breading are different preparations. Strain the first through a sieve as directed so it dips smoothly.
Frying"Plenty of hot frying fat" means deep fat; in modern terms about 350-375F. Fry a few at a time so the temperature holds; the filling is already cooked and wants only colour, a minute or two. Drain on paper before the napkin.
Foie grasProduction and sale are restricted in some jurisdictions. Cooked foie gras in a tin or terrine is what the recipe assumes; the "parings" pounded into the forcemeat are simply trimmings from a larger piece.
TrufflesTwo chopped truffles in 1894 meant fresh or preserved black truffle, sold by weight in tins. Preserved truffle peelings are the practical modern equivalent; truffle oil is not, and will taste synthetic against the liver.
YieldTwenty crusts, intended as a hot side dish in a long service. At two apiece that is ten people, served immediately while the coating is crisp.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the working repertoire of that house set down in print. Its "hot side dishes" are the small hot courses that filled out a long menu, and croustades of this kind — a bread base masked with a rich forcemeat, breaded and fried — were one way for a nineteenth-century kitchen to use the trimmings of expensive items: the recipe frankly calls for parings of foie gras pounded into a cheaper baked liver forcemeat. Foie gras reached American tables largely as imported tinned or potted terrine, which is why Ranhofer treats it as a shelf ingredient rather than something to be cooked from raw.