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Tartine, Miss Griscom
Pick meat off turkey left over from yesterday, cut it in small and nearly even pieces as possible and keep on a plate. Place two ounces rice in enamelled saucepan, add two sliced, well-cleaned, sound, medium-sized fresh mushrooms, a half ounce butter, one and a half gills milk, a gill white broth, lightly mix and boil for twenty minutes. Add turkey, with level teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne, a saltspoon grated nutmeg and half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley. Mix well with a wooden spoon, cover pan, then set in oven for forty minutes. Remove, place in mortar, sharply pound for three minutes, then add one egg yolk; pound for two minutes, add another egg yolk and pound for three minutes longer. Remove from mortar, rub paste through sieve into a bowl, pour in two tablespoons cream, add a half ounce fresh butter and mix till well amalgamated. Cut from a sandwich loaf six slices a quarter inch thick, trim off crusts, then lightly toast on one side only. Spread the preparation evenly on toasted sides, neatly smooth top of each and sprinkle a very little grated Parmesan cheese over. Place tartines on a lightly buttered tin, then set in brisk oven for five minutes or until a light golden colour, remove, dress on hot dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A leftover-turkey savoury pounded to a smooth paste and grilled on toast. The hinge is the texture: unless the pounded mixture is passed through a sieve, the finished tartine is grainy rather than the intended forcemeat-like spread.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of milk is 3/4 cup and a gill of broth is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- Two ounces riceWeight, not volume: about 1/3 cup of long-grain or Carolina-style white rice, 55 g. It is there as a binder, and it should cook to softness in the milk and broth.
- White brothAn unsalted or lightly salted light stock, veal or chicken, kept pale by not browning the bones. Any low-sodium chicken stock stands in; if yours is salted, hold back on the teaspoon of salt until you taste.
- CayenneTwo saltspoons is a half teaspoon of cayenne in a mixture that fills six small slices of toast. That is aggressive by modern palates; a quarter teaspoon is a safer starting point if you are unsure.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe specifies only 'oven' for the forty-minute covered stage; a moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern reading, just enough to finish the rice and dry the mixture slightly. The five-minute finish is the book's own 'brisk oven', i.e. roughly 425-450F, or the broiler watched closely.
- The mortarEight minutes of pounding is a food processor's work now: pulse the hot mixture smooth, add the yolks one at a time, then still rub it through a fine sieve, as the recipe directs. Bits of mushroom and rice survive both mortar and machine.
- Enamelled saucepanPresumably called for to keep a milk-based mixture off bare reactive metal. Any modern nonreactive pan does the job.
- Toasting one side onlyThe untoasted side goes down on the buttered tin and stays soft; the toasted side takes the paste and keeps it from soaking through. Do not toast both sides or the tartines turn to rusks in the hot oven.
- YieldSix slices, enough for three as a light lunch or savoury course, or six as an hors d'oeuvre if cut into fingers.
Tartine is simply the French word for a slice of bread spread with something, from butter and jam at breakfast to the elaborate pounded forcemeats of the professional kitchen, and this is squarely the second kind: a leftover dish dressed up with cream, Parmesan and a napkin-lined dish. A name like the "Miss Griscom" of the title suggests, though the page itself does not tell us, a dish christened for the patron or household that ordered it. The instruction to pick the meat off "turkey left over from yesterday" places it in the long tradition of second-day dishes that follow a large roast, and the pounding-and-sieving method is the same one used for quenelles and game purees, applied here to a bird that has already been cooked once. Before mechanical processors, this smoothness could only be bought with a mortar and a sieve and a strong arm, which is why such recipes read as luxurious despite starting with scraps.