Chapter XVII: Cold Entrees, or Chaudfroids

These elegant dishes are suitable for formal breakfasts, luncheons, and suppers, and while presenting an unusually attractive appearance, are easier to manage than less elaborate dishes, because they can usually be prepared, all but garnishing, the day before.

Although in giving the recipes meat cooked for the purpose will always be directed, and for formal purposes no care or expense should be spared, the intelligent reader will see where she may make a very pretty dish by utilizing cold fowl, game, or lamb for any simple occasion.

_Sweetbreads au Montpellier._--Parboil a pair of fine white sweetbreads, after soaking them in salt and water an hour. Let them get cold between two plates under slight pressure. Cut them into the form of cutlets (cutlet cutters are to be obtained at the fashionable New York hardware stores, and at the large French tin-shops down-town). Have some firm aspic jelly not quite set; dip each cutlet in it; chop some aspic that is hard and cold roughly; form a circle of it; arrange the cutlets on this; fill the centre with asparagus heads; pour mayonnaise round, and garnish with fancy shapes of aspic, red and white alternately. Red aspic is colored with pulp of the red beet stirred into it while liquid and then strained out; green is produced by spinach. The various shades of amber, shading into rich brown, that are so effective when tastefully mingled, are due to caramel coloring. When colored aspic is required for garnishing, pour off a little into separate vessels, and color each as required.

_Chicken Salad a la Prince._--Cut the white meat of cold fowl into neat fillets, using a very sharp knife, so that there may be no ragged edges. Mask each piece with a mixture made as follows: One tablespoonful of finely minced capers, two of minced boiled ham, three hard-boiled eggs, an anchovy boned and washed, and two sardines freed from skin. All these must be well pounded, then rubbed through a sieve; add a teaspoonful of finely minced tarragon and chives. Stir all into a tablespoonful of mayonnaise and one of aspic, semi-fluid of course. When each fillet has been well coated with the mixture and has set, line a border mould with aspic jelly, ornament the fillets of chicken with little strips of beet-root and cucumber arranged like a trellis-work. Place them very carefully round the mould on the layer of aspic, then pour in a little more aspic, until the border mould is full, and set it on ice. When about to serve have a dish well layered with the small leaves of lettuce. Drop the mould for one minute in warm water, and turn out on to the lettuce. Fill the centre with a salad composed of cucumber cut into dice, peas, string-beans cooked until tender (for this purpose the canned French string-beans serve admirably, being beautifully cut ready). Pour over the centre salad some thick mayonnaise.

Where mayonnaise makes too rich a dish for the digestion, bechamel sauce may be substituted for masking, but never for salad; for instance, two very simple chaudfroids of chicken may be made as follows:

_Chaudfroid of Chicken_, No. 1.--Cut up a young fleshy chicken into neat joints, remove the skin, mask each piece carefully with bechamel sauce; when quite set arrange on chopped aspic in a circle, garnish with strips of cucumber and beet; cut the remainder of the cucumber and beet into neat pieces, and stir into a gill of mayonnaise, and use for the centre. This and all salads should be lightly seasoned before the mayonnaise is added, or they are apt to taste flat.

_Chaudfroid of Chicken_, No. 2.--Prepare the chicken as in last recipe, only before masking the joints season the bechamel well with finely chopped tarragon; leave out the mayonnaise and aspic. Pile up the pieces of chicken on the entree dish, and garnish with Roman lettuce, or, if that is not to be had, the hearts of Boston lettuce.

_Chicken and Ham Cutlets._--Boil a young fowl with a good breast in clear stock; take it out, let it get cold; cut the breast into rather thin slices. The bones, skin, and trimmings may be thrown back in the stock, which can be boiled down to make both the bechamel and aspic for the dish (see recipes), or be kept for other purposes. Take the slices of chicken and some very well cooked lean ham that is cut so thin you can see the knife under the slices. Melt a little bechamel sauce, that must be like blanc-mange, pour it on a plate, and before it has time to cool cover the plate with the slices of chicken. Dip the ham into the stock (if it has been boiled down to jelly, otherwise into melted aspic), lay the ham over the chicken, then more thin slices of chicken. Now cover the whole by means of a spoon with more bechamel; when all this sets, which, as your sauce has only been half melted, it will do quickly, you have a large white cake about half an inch thick. Cut this cake into small pieces (unless you have a cutlet cutter), as like a cutlet in form as possible, using a sharp penknife or boning-knife. Take up each carefully, and with the end of a silver knife or small spoon cover the edges with the bechamel sauce, which must be nearly set for this purpose.

To garnish the cutlets, cut some tiny green leaves from pickled gherkins, and red ones from the skin of a red pepper-pod, and place two of each in the centre of each cutlet, star-shaped; a touch of white sauce will make them stick; place a speck of parsley not larger than a pin's head in the centre. Stick a tiny lobster claw three quarters of an inch long at the narrow end of the cutlet, and place them in a silver dish round some aspic of a bright amber color, chopped. Put a very small sprig of parsley between each cutlet.

I may here remind the reader that when aspic or bechamel is used for masking or for pouring into a mould as lining, etc., it must _not be made hot_, only softened in a bowl set in warm water, just enough to be free from lumps. It must, of course, be stirred from the moment it begins to soften. The mould to be lined should be turned about till it is well coated, and if there is a disposition to run off the sides, roll it round in ice. For instance, when the first layer of bechamel is poured on the plate as directed in last recipe, it must be moved about until quite covered, yet very thinly. If it sets too soon, hold the bottom of the plate over steam.

_Reed-birds in Aspic._--Take the back and breast bone from a dozen birds, splitting them down the back first. Save the feet. Make a force-meat of _pate de foie gras_ and panada in equal proportions; season highly, spread the inside of the birds, sew them up as nearly in shape as possible; bake seven to ten minutes, then dip them into glaze; put a little pale aspic in a dozen dariole moulds, enough to cover the bottom a quarter of an inch, and when just set put in a bird breast down; set on ice a few minutes, then pour in aspic to cover the bird a quarter of an inch. Put on ice. Turn out, and on the top of each strew pistachio nuts chopped very fine. Insert the two feet of the bird, scalded and dried, to stand up from the centre.

_Chaudfroid of Reed-birds._--Prepare as in last recipe with _pate de foie gras_ force-meat. Butter a dozen dariole moulds. Put a bird in each, breast downward; put the dariole moulds in a pan with a little water, and set it in the oven for fifteen minutes; when cold, turn out the birds, wipe them, dip each in brown _chaudfroid_ sauce, and put them on a dish to cool. When cold, lay them in rows against a pile of chopped aspic.

_Brown Chaudfroid Sauce_ is made by putting a pint of Spanish sauce, a gill of cream, half a pint of aspic jelly together, and boiling them until they are reduced one quarter. Skim constantly, and strain for use.

_White Chaudfroid Sauce_ is simply bechamel and aspic treated in the same way. It differs, of course, from plain bechamel in having the piquant flavor of the aspic; in appearance there is little difference.