A recipe from 1905

[woolybanana]

These recipes do seem a bit odd at times. There is no indication in the recipe that the livers had been pre-cooked, but I assume that they would cook in the hot soup.

I think that it is all a question of quantity for the fat. When the legs were reheated it would melt off.

But these do give us an insight as to how food was prepared and eaten over 100 years ago.

[woolybanana]

Here is another recipe suited to this day when the thermometer is hovering around zero:

Cream of Cucumber Soup

To start with, prepare a good broth with a veal shank, all the poultry giblets that you have, the usual vegetables and a quantity of water adapted to the number of guests.

Carefully remove any foam from the surface as well as surface fat and pass through a fine damp cloth. Next, choose three large cucumbers for about three litres of broth. Cut them in two lengthwise, remove the seeds and cut them into pieces. Now fry them gently in butter and season with salt and pepper. Add five or six spoons of the broth or even a bechamel if you prefer.

Reduce a little whilst stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, then pass through a fine sieve. Put this in a saucepan on the stove and dilute slowly with the broth, still stirring continuously, then add a measure of small green peas. Now let it simmer on a low heat. When ready to serve, skim scum and fat from the surface, thicken with three or four egg yolks beaten in half a litre of light cream and some butter Pour into the tureen and serve very hot.

[idun]

Raw cucumber no longer agrees with this olde gal, even though I like it, but I can eat it cooked, so this recipe has inspired me for next time I do a broth and have some cucumber in. But for all I cook a lot, I am a lazy cook too, and this seems like toooo much work for me.

[:D] and saying that, on this miserable day, I have just baked, baguettes, loaves, buns, teacakes with raisins and walnut cakes. But all easy prep. And for some that would not look lazy, but really it was quick and easy for me to do the mixes, just the bread that literally took hours and hours to

rise as I never use much yeast and let the breads rise in their own sweet time.

[woolybanana]

Whilst waiting for the rugby and avoiding housework, here is another recipe from the same menu as the previous one:

Grilled sea bream (fr = dorade) with a langoustine coulis

The dorade is a very delicate fish that does not keep well so must be eaten very fresh. The new means of refrigeration means that this fish can be obtained in Paris

Choose medium sized fish, scale,empty and wash it with plenty of water, dry off with a cloth, slash either side but not too deep, salt with fine salt and cover all over with plenty of olive oil.

Place under (or on) a moderate grill turning regularly until golden brown. Serve them on a piping hot serving plate with the langoustine coulis or, a tomato sauce.

To make the coulis

Cook about 30 langoustines in salted boiling water. Remove the tails (Peel them is you wish) and crush the remains in a mortar with a few blanched almonds.

In a pan with a good sized piece of butter, put half a pound of veal steak, a slice of ham a carrot and a parsnip. When everything has browned, sprinkle with flower, turning with a wooden spoon. Cover with some stock, add salt and pepper, an onion with cloves stuck in it, a bouquet garni and some finely sliced mushrooms. Leave to simmer for a long time, put through a fine colander, then mix in the langoustine puree.

Pass through a fine cloth.

Pour the sauce over the fish and garnish with the langoustines

[idun]

Is this a french recipe????

I make bisque and make that bisque into a thicker sauce to go with fish, but have never used a meat stock in it. I cannot help wonder why, or what difference it would make.

I cannot get veal, years ago, friends of friends in North Yorkshire used to be veal farmers, the meat all for export.I have never seen it in the shops here and it is one thing I haven't missed.

[woolybanana]

No idea, Doudoune seems odd but there we are.

[idun]

I found that french friends in general did not like 'surf and turf', I tried with them, but it was not really to their taste. That was why I asked.

Still, I love oyster sauce with meats when I cook chinese style food, so I would probably like it. And fish has been used as flavouring with meat for a long time, after all the romans used it all the time.

[mint]

If using dorade, always use the royal and not the gris.  Also, don't bother unless you like a lot of bones.

For me, it won't be the cooking but the eating what with having to be careful with all the bones!!

[woolybanana]

Surely, Nimty, you can fillet the dorade so as to get no bones?

[Patf]

The fish counter at Carrefour often has dorade fillets. Dorade s a bit like sea bass (bar), also very boney.

[woolybanana]

The next two recipes follow on from those above and are part of the entrée for a winter celebratory meal circa 1905.

Turkey poult (young turkey) stuffed with mushrooms

Serve this as an entree either roasted or braised depending on your menu,but it is better cooked in a moderate oven.

Peel a kilo of fresh mushrooms, carefully wash and cook slowly in an open saucepan, remove from heat, drain and chop roughly. Mix with a stuffing made of fat bacon, breadcrumbs, a little finely chopped parsley and pepper.

Stuff the farce into a either a dindonneau (turkey poult) or a young turkey. Sew up with cooking cord to stop the farce escaping.

Cover the bird with streaky bacon, then cover the whole with well tied on buttered cooking paper. Now cook in the oven, on a spit or, at a pinch, it can be braised. Baste the bird with its own juice and fat.

Remove the paper after an hour and a half or two hours and brown the streaky bacon.

Degrease the cooking juices, pass through a fine mesh sieve (muslin better) and mix in a little reduced sherry or meat juices.

Slice the bird and serve with the sauce

Escalopes de ris de veau, sauce Vincent.

Disgorge the veal sweetbreads; to do this place the sweetbreads in a bowl, cover with cold water and refrigerate for 4 hours, changing the water 2 or 3 times. Drain. Now blanche them in salted boiling water, then roast in lightly browned butter. Leave to cool.

Make a bechamel sauce using the cooking juices to which have been added mushroom puree. Leave to cool.

Cut the sweetbreads into finger thickness slices and spread a thicklayer of sauce on either side Now cover top and bottom with a fine slice of cured (pickled) ox tongue. Now pass through egg white and fine breadcrumbs. Fry these escalopes in hot oil.

To serve, place in a circle on a round plate and in the middle pour a sauce Vincent, mustard mayonnaise coloured with spinach.

[woolybanana]

This is the main dish for the Xmas celebration dinner of 1905. It seems tasty. Not sure how practical the recipe is as it doesn't seem to be that well written and my scanning software was not that accurate. Any, here we go:

Marcassin (wild boar piglet) with sauce Saint-Hubert.

If you can get a small enough wild boar piglet, serve it as if it were a suckling pig. Otherwise remove the two haunches.

Soak in a marinade composed of white wine, olive oil, brandy and lemon juice with a crushed garlic clove, paprika or red pepper which is sprinkled over the meat, salt, laurel leaves, crushed thyme, parsley. Do not leave in the marinade for more than 48 hours. Then make a number of incisions superficially in the meat and insert small pieces of bacon. Cook on a spit or in an oven on a grill to let the air circulate, with a cooking pan to catch the fat. No need to baste or use butter; the bacon, melting slowly will damp the meat sufficiently. The oven must be on a low to moderate heat . Allow three quarters of an hour cooking time for each kilo of meat.

Dispose of the fat which has no further use. Into cooking pan pour the marinade, heat up and scratch the juice which has stuck to the bottom of the cooking pan.

For the Saint-Hubert sauce

Brown some bacon with a small carrot and a chopped onion. Stir in a little flour with white or red wine and a glass of good vinegar. Add a bouquet barni, two cloves, peppercorns, on or two sugar lumps and a little paprika. Reduce slowly by half over two hours. Run the sauce through a fine sieve, add the marinade from the cooking pan. Pour onto the meat piping hot.

[Loiseau]

Bon dieu! Our ancestors had a bit more patience that I would have...

[woolybanana]

No telly. So they cooked and had kids!