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Terrine of Plover, Delcasse
Cut heads and feet off six fat plovers, split open through backs without separating, draw and remove bones from breasts. Lay on a table, season with a half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon each cayenne, grated nutmeg and mixed spices, then spread a teaspoon of pate de foie gras over each. Cut a large truffle in six quarters, place one quarter over each bird, fold up and keep on a plate. Finely chop a pound each raw lean veal and fresh fat pork, place both in mortar with a teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne, a saltspoon nutmeg and two egg yolks, pound to a very smooth pulp, add a half gill sherry, mix well, and rub force through sieve into a bowl. Line interior of an oval cocotte earthen tureen with thin slices larding pork, spread a layer of force at bottom and sides of tureen, place the six plovers in tureen crosswise, sprinkle over a tablespoon finely chopped truffle and fill tureen with balance of force, giving it a dome shape. Cover surface with thin slices of lard, place a sprig bay leaf on top, cover tureen, place in a roasting tin and pour hot water in pan up to two-thirds height of tureen. Set in oven for an hour and fifteen minutes, remove, place in a cool place and lift up cover. Place a board same size as tureen over pate, lay a pound weight on it, keep in that condition until cold, turn pate on table, remove lard, and thoroughly wash and wipe inside of tureen. Set tureen on ice, pour in some melted jelly to quarter-inch thickness and let set. Cut a small truffle in thin slices, then with small star cutter cut out as many star-like pieces as you can, place all around bottom of jelly, replace plovers in tureen, pour jelly all around edges and cover birds, etc., with it. When thoroughly set unmould on a cold dish with a folded napkin and serve.
This is a classic cold game pâté built in a lined earthenware tureen, and it cannot be made today as written. The obstacle is the bird itself, not the technique.
- Plover are protectedGolden plover, black-bellied plover and their relatives are protected in the United States under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. In the United Kingdom the position varies by species: European golden plover remains a quarry bird with a statutory open season under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, while grey plover and most other waders are protected, and the sale of wild-taken birds is restricted. In practice no commercial supplier offers them. When this book was compiled, small shorebirds were still ordinary market game.
- Wild-shot game birds in a sealed terrineA whole-bird pâté cooked in a bain-marie relies on the forcemeat reaching temperature all the way to the centre through a dome of raw veal and pork. The original gives no oven temperature and no internal check, only "an hour and fifteen minutes," which is not a controllable instruction for a dense meat loaf containing raw egg yolk and fresh fat pork.
- The lard lining is not modern bacon"Thin slices larding pork" and the "slices of lard" laid on top mean thin sheets of pork back fat, not streaky bacon. The fat is structural: it seals the surface and gives the pâté a clean face when unmoulded.
- Vessel and vocabularyA "cocotte earthen tureen" is a lidded oval earthenware dish of the same family as the modern terrine mould. "Force" throughout is forcemeat, the pounded veal-and-pork farce; a saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon, and a half gill of sherry is about a quarter cup (rather more by imperial measure).
- The jelly is the point of the second stageThe whole business of pressing under a one-pound weight, unmoulding, washing the tureen and rebuilding the pâté on a bed of set aspic with truffle stars exists so the finished slice shows a clear jellied border. That masonry work is what separates a terrine en gelée from a plain baked pâté.
- If you want to cook something like thisUse a current recipe for a game terrine built on a legal, farmed bird, with stated oven temperature and a target internal temperature. Do not adapt the timings above.
The "Delcassé" in the title almost certainly honours Théophile Delcassé, French foreign minister through the years around 1900 and the architect of the Entente Cordiale; naming an elaborate cold entrée for a serving statesman is often said to have been common in the grand-hotel kitchens whose repertoire this book records. Small shorebirds were legitimate luxury game in Europe and America into the early twentieth century, sold by the dozen in city markets and prized, like woodcock and snipe, for dark flesh strong enough to stand against foie gras and truffle. Market hunting on that scale is exactly what emptied the flyways: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 in the United States ended the commercial trade in plover and its kin, and recipes like this one survive as a record of a larder that no longer legally exists. The construction itself — birds boned, stuffed, wrapped in a pounded forcemeat, baked in a water bath, pressed, then reset in aspic with cut truffle ornament — is straight out of the Escoffier-era garde-manger, where the cold buffet was where a kitchen showed off.