No. 944

Puff Paste Patties of Veal Godiveau with Chives, Cracovian, Mazarin or St. Hubert

Petes Pates Feuilletes de Godiveau, aux Ciboulettes Cracovienne, Mazarin ou St. Hubert

Small patties are frequently served as a hot hors-d'oeuvre; they should be cooked only while the oysters are being eaten, so to have them ready to send to the table after the soup.

Small Patties of Veal Godiveau.—Roll out thin some fragments of puff paste; remove from it round pieces two and a half inches in diameter, turn them over on to a baking sheet slightly wetted with water, using a brush for the purpose, and lay in the center of each a veal godiveau (No.85) ball, one inch and a quarter in diameter. Moisten the paste around the godiveau with a brush slightly wetted with water, and place on top another puff paste round, three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness; turn them over, and fasten the two edges together. Mark some lines on the top of the paste with the back of the pastry cutter an inch and a half in diameter, egg the surfaces twice, and cook them in a brisk oven for fifteen minutes.

Small Patties of Godiveau with Chives.—Fill the patties with some veal godiveau (No.85), to which has been mixed some chopped chives and parsley.

Small Patties of Godiveau Cracovian are made with pike godiveau (No.83), and cooked fine herbs, and garnished and finished like patties of godiveau of veal.

Small Patties Mazarin.—Take chicken godiveau (No.82) and mix with it truffles, tongue and mushrooms cut in eighth of an inch squares, also some raw fine herbs; finish the same as for the veal godiveau (No.85).

Small Patties a la St. Hubert, are to be made with game godiveau (No.84), mixing in with it truffles, mushrooms, tongue cut in squares and some glaze (No.402), and finishing exactly the same as the veal godiveau (No.85).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you already have a tub of godiveau in the cold room and a stack of puff paste trimmings. Everything hinges on the forcemeat ball being cold and the oven being hot enough to raise the paste before the filling starts to weep.

What godiveau isA fine forcemeat, in Ranhofer's kitchen made of lean veal (or pike, chicken, game) pounded with beef suet or butter, eggs and iced water, then kept very cold. The cross-references (Nos. 82-85) point to those separate base recipes; without one of them this page is only the assembly method. Any well-made, firm mousseline-style forcemeat will behave the same way.
Brisk ovenRanhofer gives no temperatures; 'brisk' is conventionally read today as somewhere around 425-450F. Puff paste wrapped around a cold, wet forcemeat needs the initial blast to set the layers before steam from the filling softens them.
Fifteen minutes is not arbitraryA 1 1/4-inch ball of raw forcemeat needs the full time to reach a safe center, and puff paste browns fast. Check one from the batch: 160F at the middle for the veal, 165F for the chicken and game versions. Pike godiveau is done a little sooner.
Keep everything coldRoll the balls, assemble, and chill the tray for 20-30 minutes before baking. Warm forcemeat leaks at the seam and warm butter in the paste means no lift.
Sealing the seamWater, not egg, on the lower round, as written; egg on a seam can slip. Ranhofer has you turn the patties over and then fasten the two edges together; press only at the outer edge.
Egg twiceTwo thin coats of beaten egg, the second after the first has dried, give the lacquered finish. Keep the wash off the cut edges or the layers glue shut and the patty rises unevenly.
The scoringRanhofer has you mark lines on the top with the back of a 1 1/2-inch pastry cutter, smaller than the 2 1/2-inch base. Keep the mark shallow so it does not cut through the paste.
Glaze (No. 402)A heavily reduced brown stock, stiff and gelatinous when cold, worked into the game forcemeat for depth. A spoonful of firm demi-glace or reduced veal stock does the same job.
Yield and timingA 2 1/2-inch base with a 1 1/4-inch ball gives a two-bite patty; figure two or three per person as a first course. The instruction to bake them during the oyster course simply means they must go to the table straight from the oven, since puff paste collapses within minutes.

A Little History

This is Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of some thirty years' cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and the page shows how a great restaurant kitchen economized: the patties are made from "fragments of puff paste," the trimmings left from larger work, filled with forcemeat already standing by for quenelles and garnishes. Godiveau is an old French kitchen word for a pounded veal-and-suet forcemeat, in use well before the nineteenth century and by Ranhofer's day extended to pike, chicken and game bases. The names attached to the variants follow the usual haute cuisine practice of honoring patrons and saints: Mazarin is conventionally said to recall the cardinal, and St. Hubert is the patron of hunters, which is why that version is the game one. The staging is worth noting too: oysters, soup, then the hot hors-d'oeuvre, with the patties timed to come out of the oven while the table was still working through the shells.