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Chicken Terrine, Bruxelloise
Singe, cut head, wings and legs from a three-pound tender chicken. Carefully remove skin, beginning at back and carefully avoiding cutting it. Lift up breast and cut each filet in three lengthwise equal pieces. Finely chop all the dark meat with one and a half pounds raw, lean white veal; place and pound these two articles in a mortar to a fine pulp. Add a bread panade, pound again, then rub the force through fine sieve into a bowl, set bowl on ice, then add two egg yolks, a light teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper, one saltspoon grated nutmeg, one saltspoon ground mixed spice, two tablespoons sherry, one gill cream, and sharply mix with spatula five minutes. Spread out the chicken skin on a table, then carefully spread one-third of the force over the skin and arrange three pieces of breast over the force; spread another third of the force over the chicken, arrange the balance of the filets over the force. Then neatly spread balance of the force over all. Fold up sides so as to entirely envelop it. Place in an oval earthen tureen, arrange a piece larding pork on top. Pour in one-half gill sherry and one-quarter gill brandy. Cover tureen, place in a small roasting tin, pour in hot water up to one-third of the height of the tureen, set in oven for one and a half hours. Remove, place an oval board on top of the tureen, lay a pound weight on top of board, then keep in a cool place until thoroughly cold. Turn out on a cold dish, remove the lard. Cut four tablespoons of jelly in small squares, sprinkle it around the chicken, place a few lettuce leaves around and serve.
A classic hot-water-bath terrine, essentially a chicken and veal forcemeat wrapped in the bird's own skin. The instructions assume a professional larder, but everything here maps onto a modern kitchen once the units and the missing oven temperature are pinned down.
- The hinge: skinning the bird wholeThe whole construction depends on getting one unbroken sheet of skin off the chicken. Work from the backbone outward with the bird cold, using fingers and only the tip of a boning knife, and patch any tears with skin trimmed from the thighs before you start spreading forcemeat.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A covered terrine in a water bath wants 325°F; the water should stay below a simmer for the full hour and a half. Check the center with a thermometer rather than trusting the clock: 160-165°F is done, and much beyond that squeezes moisture out of a veal farce.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup, so the cream is 1/2 cup, the sherry poured into the tureen 1/4 cup and the brandy 2 tablespoons. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, which makes the cayenne a generous 1/2 teaspoon — assertive but in period style.
- Bread panadeNo quantity is given, and this is genuinely ambiguous. The standard version is crustless white bread simmered in milk or stock to a stiff paste, then cooled — roughly 2 to 3 ounces of bread for this weight of meat, or about a cup of the finished paste. Too much and the terrine turns pasty.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in a minute or two, but keep the meat and the bowl very cold or the mixture will break. Passing the farce through a fine sieve is not optional if you want the smooth, sliceable texture the recipe is after; a drum sieve or a stiff spatula and a fine-mesh strainer both work.
- Mixed spiceAn English blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves and ginger, still sold in the UK. Quatre épices or a pinch each of allspice, clove and cinnamon substitutes cleanly.
- Larding porkA sheet of fresh pork back fat or fatback, laid over the top to baste the terrine as it cooks. Unsmoked streaky bacon or caul fat will do. The recipe's later instruction to "remove the lard" means lifting off this fat sheet and any set drippings.
- Weighting and restingPressing under a board and a one-pound weight while it cools compacts the farce so it slices without crumbling. Let it chill at least overnight, and preferably two days, before turning out; the flavor of the sherry and spice needs the time.
- The jellyChopped aspic — clarified chicken or veal stock set firm, diced, and scattered around the terrine as garnish. Powdered gelatin in strong stock gives the same effect.
- YieldA three-pound chicken plus a pound and a half of veal makes a substantial terrine: twelve to sixteen slices as a first course, or eight as a cold lunch dish.
A terrine is named for its vessel — the earthenware dish the forcemeat is cooked and pressed in — and the technique of boning a bird, grinding its dark meat with veal, and rebuilding it inside its own skin is standard garde-manger work of the French professional kitchen. "Bruxelloise" in classical menu French more usually signals a fixed garnish — Brussels sprouts, often with braised endive and potatoes — than a loose Belgian association; the tag here is best read as a house name rather than a documented regional original. What the recipe really shows is how a hotel larder used a whole bird: filets kept intact as visible inlay through the center of each slice, the tougher leg and thigh meat pounded into the farce, the skin turned into wrapping, nothing discarded. Cold pressed terrines like this one appeared on buffets and supper menus, where they could be made days ahead and sliced to order.