No. 941

Turbigo Patties

Bouchees Turbigo

These are made with three-sixteenths of an inch dice of duck's livers, truffles and artichoke bottoms, mixed with a tomato puree (No.730), pressed through a very fine sieve, adding the same quantity of well reduced veloute sauce (No.415). Heat well and thicken with egg-yolks and cream; fill the patties with this garnishing, and replace the covers by a small half inch ball of foies-gras taken from the terrine and passed through a fine sieve, dipped in eggs, bread-crumbed and fried.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has velouté, tomato purée and baked bouchée shells on hand, so the recipe is really an assembly note. Read it backwards: the pastry cases and the two sauces are separate jobs done in advance.

The hinge: the egg liaisonOnce the yolks and cream go in, the filling must not simmer again or it will curdle and break. Hold it below about 180F, stirring, only until it coats the spoon.
What a bouchée isA bouchée is a small puff-pastry case with a lid cut from the same round, baked hollow. Ranhofer assumes you have them; commercial frozen puff pastry cut with two rounds of 2 in. and 1 in. cutters gives the same thing.
The cross-referencesNo. 730 is the book's tomato pur e, cooked down and sieved; No. 415 is velout e, a white stock sauce built on a light roux, here reduced until thick. "The same quantity" most naturally reads as as much velout e as tomato pur ee, though the text does not spell that out.
Three-sixteenths of an inchAbout 5 mm. Cut the livers, truffles and artichoke bottoms to a true small dice so the filling spoons cleanly into a bouchée rather than jamming at the rim.
Duck liversOrdinary duck liver, not foie gras, and it should be cooked right through before dicing: saut e in butter until firm all the way to the centre, then cool before cutting. Chicken livers are a reasonable stand-in.
Artichoke bottomsThe trimmed, fuzz-free base of a large globe artichoke, boiled in acidulated water. Jarred or frozen artichoke bottoms are sold in Middle Eastern groceries and are the practical route; marinated hearts are too acidic here.
Foie gras from the terrineA cooked, chilled terrine, sieved and rolled into half-inch balls. Chill the balls hard before breading, and fry at 350-375F for well under a minute -- long enough to colour the crumbs, not long enough to melt the fat. Truffle-free mousse de foie gras works and is far cheaper.
Quantities and yieldNo amounts are given. As a rough working figure, 4 oz each of diced liver and artichoke with an ounce of truffle, bound with about a cup of the combined sauces and one yolk, will fill a couple of dozen small bouch ees, give or take, depending on the size of the cases.

A Little History

The name comes from Turbigo in Lombardy, site of an 1859 engagement in the Franco-Austrian war fought the day before Magenta; French cooking of the following decades named a whole run of garnishes after that campaign, and "Turbigo" is generally traced to it. In the classic repertory a Turbigo garnish means chipolata sausages and mushrooms in a tomato-tinted sauce, usually served with saut eed kidneys, so Ranhofer's version -- duck liver, truffle and artichoke in tomato-tinted velout e -- keeps the tomato and the offal but little else. That freedom with a codified name is characteristic of The Epicurean (1894), which records what Charles Ranhofer actually sent out of the Delmonico's kitchen in New York rather than what a Paris textbook prescribed. The fried, breaded ball of foie gras standing in for the pastry lid is a striking flourish: a hot side dish in this book was expected to look worked-over.