A Sample Edwardian Upper-Class Dinner Menu

An Evening Inspired by Downton Abbey Thursday, February 23, 2012 A Sample Edwardian Upper-Class Dinner Menu

To start Hors d’oeuvres such as caviar on brown bread, saucisson de Lyon, or oysters Soup: Consommé, such as Ox-tail (or Cream Soup, served with Sherry, Champagne or Madeira.

Hors d’oeuvres such as olives, anchovies, radishes or pickled herrings may be placed on the table during the soup or after.

A light Entrée: Vol-au-vents (warm savory pastries).

Fish: Cold poached Salmon with Ravigote Sauce or a hot fish dish with sauce; potatoes, served with Chablis, Graves, or Sherry.

Butcher’s meat: Roast joint; French beans; served with Bordeaux or Chambertin wine.

Vegetable (served alone): Artichokes with mayonnaise and tomato garnish, or asparagus with Hollandaise sauce; served with a white Rhine wine.

Fowl/Game: Chaudfroid (a cooked, cold dish with sauce), such as rabbit quenelles, or a hot game/fowl dish; small salad, served with red Burgundy wine.

Entremets: A cooked cheese savory (cheese talmouses or soufflé), or a selection of cheeses served with Port and ale or porter; jellies or creams.

Dessert: Escoffier's English fruit tarts, served with Madeira, Sherry, or Champagne. Almond paste crescents; ice cream or ices. Petit fours are passed last.

Coffee and liquors are taken in the drawing room after dessert. Men may lag behind in the dining to drink wine while the ladies take coffee elsewhere. The men join them for coffee and the ladies move on to sparkling water. ❖❖❖❖

Wines shared at An Evening Inspired by Downton Abbey Sherry MS Walker Available at most liquor stores Chablis Busa Wine & Spirits 133 Mass. Ave. Lexington 781-862-1400 345 Main St. Reading 781.944-7474 180 B Cambridge St. Burlington 781-272-1050 Port: Noval Black Quinta do Noval Available in these Boston area locations: Federal Wine & Spirits in Boston Brothers Super Liquors, Boston Bin Ends, Braintree Wholefoods, Dedham Vin Bin, Marlborough Beacon Hill Wine & Gourmet, Melrose Market Wine & Spirits, Salem Kappy’s in Medford, Fitchburg, Danvers, Peabody

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Recipes from An Evening Inspired By Downton Abbey Hors d’oeuvres: Olives and Anchovies Olives are imported to this country from Spain, Portugal, Italy and France; those grown in Lucca country are esteemed the most palatable: being perfectly sweet, and free from any strong flavor, they are served for dessert in glasses with a little of their own liquor in which they are preserved. Olives being first peeled carefully from the stone, are filled in with pounded anchovy, and served with a little oil as an appetizer at the commencement of dinner, or handed round after cheese, the better to relish a glass of old port.

Vegetable: Artichokes with Mayonnaise and tomato garnish: Trim the tops and cut off the stalks evenly of some nice fresh artichokes, put them in cold water with a little salt, and let them remain in this for two to three hours; then put them into plenty of slightly salted boiling water, and let them simmer gently for fifty to sixty minutes. Then take them up with a slice, drain them on a clean hair sieve, place them on a hot dish on a paper or napkin, and serve for a second course vegetable.

Drizzle with mayonnaise and peeled, chopped tomatoes Fish Course: Cold Poached Salmon with Ravigote Sauce When salmon is to be served cold it should be cooked, either whole or in large pieces, in the court bouillon and cooled in the latter. Pieces cooked separately may seem better or may be more easily made to look sightly, but their meat is drier than that of the salmon cooked whole. And what is lost in appearance with the very large pieces is more than compensated for by their extra quality.

In dishing cold salmon, the skin may be removed and the fillets bared, so that the fish may be more easily decorated, but the real gourmet will always prefer the salmon served in its natural silver vestment. In decorating cold salmon use pieces of cucumber, anchovy fillets, capers, slices of tomato, curled-leaf parsley: I am not partial to the decorating of salmon with softened butter, coloured or not, laid on by means of the piping-bag. Apart from the fact that this method of decoration is rarely artistic, the butter used combines badly with the cold sauces and the meat of the salmon on the diner's plate. Very green tarragon leaves, chervil, lobster coral, &c., afford a more natural and more delicate means of ornamentation. The only butter fit to be served with cold salmon is

Montpellier butter though this, in fact, is but a cold sauce often resorted for the coating of the cold fish in question. Among the garnishes which suit cold salmon, I might mention small peeled, and emptied tomatoes garnished with some kind of salad; hard-boiled eggs, either wholly stuffed, or stuffed in halves or in quarters, barquettes, tartlets and cassolettes made from cucumber or beetroot, parboiled until almost completely cooked and garnished with a puree of tunny, of sardines, of anchovies, small aspics of shrimps or of crayfishes' tails; small slices of lobster, etc. Almost all the cold sauces may accompany cold salmon.

Ravigote Sauce Ingredients: spinach water cress and parsley lemon juice mayonnaise sauce.

Pound a little spinach, watercress, and parsley in a mortar, with a little lemon juice and add to mayonnaise sauce. This makes a delicate green dressing.

Cucumbers as side garnish for Salmon Peel a large cucumber, and cut it into olive shapes. Put these into a stew pan with enough cold water to cover them and a pinch of salt. Bring to the boil then strain and put into a stew pan with one ounce of butter and the strained juice of half a lemon. Cook on the stove for about fifteen minutes with the pan covered down then mix with a little chopped parsley.

Entremets course: Cheese Talmousse Ingredients required: Half a pint of milk, four ounces of flour, two ounces of sugar, two ounces of butter, six ounces of cream curd, the rind of an orange rubbed on sugar, a very little salt, and a half pound of puff paste.

Put the milk, butter, sugar and salt into a stewpan on a stove-fire, and as soon as these begin to simmer, fill in the flour by stirring the whole with a wooden spoon for two or three minutes over the fire; then add the curd (from which all the superfluous moisture must be extracted by pressing it in a napkin), and work in the eggs one after the other, remembering that this paste must be kept to about the same substance as petis-choux.

Make half a pound of puff-paste, and give it nine turns. Roll this out to an eighth of an inch in thickness, stamp out about two dozen circular pieces, with a tin cutter about two inches in diameter, and place them in neat order on a baking sheet about an inch apart from each other; then place a good teaspoonful of the preparation described above in the center of each, wet these round the edges, and then turn up the sides so as to form each of them in the

shape of a three cornered hat: egg them over with a paste-brush, bake them of a light brown colour, and when they are withdrawn from the oven, shake some fine sugar over them. These cakes may be served either hot or cold.

Talmouses with Cheese: These are prepared just as the foregoing, except that the sugar and rind of an orange must be omitted, substituting in their stead four ounces of scraped Brie, or Neuchatel cheese: when these cannot be procured, Gruyere or Parmesan cheese may be used for the purpose.

Desserts course Almond Paste Crescents Blanch, peel and pound 10 oz. of almonds; add 10 oz. of pounded sugar and moisten to a stiff paste with some white of egg.

Sprinkle a pasteboard with fine sugar; roll the paste on to a ¼-inch thickness, and cut it out, with a 1 ½ inch round cutter, into crescent-shape pieces, ¾ inch.

Bake the crescents in a slack oven; and when cold, glaze them with some Glace Royale, flavored with Kirschenwasser. Add some coarsely shifted sugar on the top, and dry them in the oven for two minutes.

Escoffier English Fruit Tarts These tarts are made in deep pie or pastry-dishes or forms. What ever be the fruit used, clean it, peel it, or core it, according to its nature. Some fruits are sliced while others are merely quartered or left whole.

Set them in the dish, to within a half inch of its brim; sprinkle them with moist or powdered sugar, and (in the case of fruit with firm pulps like apples) with a few tablespoons of water.

First cover the edges of the dish, which should be moistened slightly, with a strip of short pastes, an inch wide. Then cover the dish with a layer of puff paste, which seal down well to the strip of the paste, already in position and slightly moistened for that purpose. With a brush moisten the layer of paste constituting the cover of the tart; sprinkle it with sugar, and set the tart to bake in a moderate oven. All English tarts are made in this way, and all fruits may be used with them even when, as in the case of gooseberries, they are green.

Accompany these tarts by a sauceboat of fresh-cream or by a custard pudding. ❖❖❖❖