No. 943
Salpicon of Foies-Gras, Montglas, Regence, Royal Patties
Bouchees de Salpicon de Foies-gras, Montglas, Regence, Royale
This is an assembly instruction rather than a standalone recipe: Ranhofer assumes you have already baked puff-paste cases and have a salpicon at hand. The points below fill in what the cross-references would have told you.
- What a salpicon isA salpicon is nothing more than ingredients cut into even small dice and bound with a thick sauce. The dice should be about a quarter inch and uniform, since the whole effect depends on the filling holding its shape on the spoon rather than running out of the case.
- The named fillingsMontglas is the classic combination of foie gras, truffle, pickled tongue and mushrooms bound with a Madeira-scented demi-glace. Regence and royale, as Ranhofer numbers them, are comparably rich mixtures generally built on poultry, sweetbreads, truffle and quenelles in a reduced white sauce; check Nos. 750 and 751 for his exact composition. Any thick, well-reduced ragout of diced meat will behave the same way in the case.
- Bouchees, not vol-au-ventA bouchee is a single-mouthful puff-paste case, roughly two inches across; a vol-au-vent is the large version for the table. Frozen all-butter puff pastry cut with two graduated cutters gives an honest result, and commercial pre-baked cases work if you crisp them for five minutes at 375F first.
- Emptying the casesLift the lid with a knife tip while the pastry is still warm and scrape out the soft dough inside. Any damp paste left behind will soften and the case is more likely to give way once filled.
- Bind the sauce tightlyThe sauce must be reduced until it coats and clings, closer to a glaze than a gravy. A thin sauce soaks the pastry through before the dish reaches the table, which is why Ranhofer says serve at once.
- Filling temperatureHave the salpicon hot in a bain-marie and the cases hot from the oven, and fill only at the moment of service. Foie gras in particular breaks and turns greasy if the mixture is held over direct heat or reheated hard.
- Dressing on napkinsThe folded napkin on the platter was partly presentation convention and is usually explained as absorbing grease and keeping the cases from sliding. A rack-crisped case on a warm plate does the same work; skip the linen if you like.
- YieldFigure two bouchees per person as a first course, three or four with drinks. A cup of salpicon fills roughly a dozen two-inch cases.
Charles Ranhofer spent more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the working system of that kitchen written down, which is why entries like this one read as a note to a cook who already has the sauces and pastry standing by. The named salpicons belong to the vocabulary of the nineteenth-century French repertoire: Montglas is traditionally linked to the Montglas name, though the attribution is not documented, and the mixture is defined by its foie gras, truffle and tongue; Regence is generally taken to refer to the French Regency and in cooking signals a costly garnish. Bouchees suited ball suppers and buffets, where a hot dish had to survive being carried through rooms and eaten standing up, and a crisp case with a tightly bound filling holds up better in that setting.