No. 907

Fontage Croustades a la Flavignan

Croustades Fontage a la Flavignan

Into a vessel put four ounces of sifted flour, two or three egg-yolks, a little salt, and four tablespoonfuls of olive oil; mix all well together with a gill and a half of tepid water, adding a little beer or a little compressed yeast the size of a three-eights of an inch ball, diluting it in a little luke warm water. Cover the vessel and place it in a mild temperature of eighty degrees for about two hours. Heat some lard on the fire, place in it a fontage iron (Fig. 174). As soon as the iron is hot, dip it almost entirely in the paste, take it out at once and plunge it into the hot frying fat and keep it there until the paste is cooked and can be detached from the iron, then remove and invert it on a grate to keep warm, while continuing the operation until a sufficient number are prepared, and just when serving fill them with a Flavignan salpicon (No. 744).

← No. 906 Crusts of Woodcock Hot Side Dishes No. 908 Kulibiac, Russian →

For the Modern Kitchen

A yeast-raised batter fried on a hot iron to make crisp hollow shells, filled at the last moment. The batter is easy; the technique with the iron is where it succeeds or fails.

The hinge: heat the iron, not just the fatThe iron must be brought up to frying temperature in the fat before it touches the batter, and it must be lifted out and dipped in one quick motion. A cool iron makes the batter slide off; too long a soak and the shell will not release.
Do not submerge the iron in the batter"Almost entirely" is deliberate. If the batter runs over the top face of the iron it seals the shell shut and you will never get it off cleanly.
MeasurementsFour ounces of flour is weight, roughly a scant cup or 115 g. A gill and a half is six fluid ounces, three-quarters of a cup. Total batter is thin, closer to crepe batter than pancake batter.
Fontage ironSold today as a rosette iron or timbale iron, a shaped metal head on a long handle. Any of the fluted or cup-shaped patterns work; new irons need seasoning in hot fat before first use or nothing will release.
The leavening"A little beer" here most likely means unpasteurized, actively fermenting beer used as a yeast source, which supermarket beer is not. Use the compressed-yeast option instead: a ball three-eighths of an inch across is well under a gram of fresh yeast -- a pinch of instant dry yeast. Eighty degrees for two hours is a warm proof, not a hot one.
Frying fatLard is called for and gives the cleanest flavor, but any neutral fat with a high smoke point will do. Hold it at 360-375F; below that the shells absorb fat, above it they color before they set.
Fill at the last momentThese shells go soft within minutes of meeting a moist filling. Fry ahead, keep them uncovered on a rack in a low oven, and spoon in the salpicon as they leave the kitchen.
The fillingThe Flavignan salpicon is a separate recipe in the book (No. 744) and is not reproduced here. A salpicon is simply a fine dice of meat, poultry or vegetables bound in a thick sauce; any well-reduced version will suit.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A batter of this size should make roughly two dozen small shells, depending on the iron.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the cooking he oversaw at Delmonico's in New York, and it is a good example of the book's habits: a French name, a cross-reference to a garnish recipe hundreds of pages away, and a piece of specialized equipment illustrated by figure number. Fried batter shells made on a shaped iron were a standard item of the nineteenth-century professional repertoire, offering a crisp vessel for a rich salpicon without the labor of pastry; the same tool survives in domestic kitchens as the rosette iron, best known now for Scandinavian-American Christmas cookies. Ranhofer's use of beer or a pinhead of compressed yeast to lift the batter reflects a period when brewer's yeast was a common leavening in professional kitchens, and when compressed yeast was still often measured by eye rather than by weight.