Offal & the Whole Animal · Starter
Chicken Liver Parfait
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, aromatics blooming from the first bite, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 500 g chicken livers, trimmed of green spots and sinew
- 400 g unsalted butter, cubed
- 120 g shallots, sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, sliced
- 100 ml ruby port
- 100 ml Madeira
- 50 ml brandy
- 3 sprigs thyme
- 3 whole eggs, about 165 g
- 12 g fine salt
- 2 g ground white pepper
- 150 g clarified butter, for sealing
Equipment
Blender · Bain-marie · Fine sieve
The skills inside
Tempering a custardThe water bathStraining & passing through a sieveMashing & puréeing
The words inside
Port, Madeira & the Fortified Sweets
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the shallots, garlic, thyme, port, Madeira and brandy until reduced to about 3 tablespoons of syrup, then strain and set aside.
- Melt the butter and hold it at 55C (131F). Warm the livers, eggs, reduction, salt and pepper in a blender jug standing in hot water until the mix reads 50C (122F).
- Blend smooth, then pour in the warm butter in a slow steady stream until the mixture is glossy and thick, like pouring custard.
- Pass through a fine chinois, pressing hard on the solids, and pour into a lined 1 litre terrine. Tap the mould to bring up the bubbles.
- Bake in a bain-marie at 100C (212F) until the centre reads 63C (145F), about 45 minutes, then chill overnight and seal under a 5 mm layer of clarified butter. 45 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The water bath 13 recipes
- The water stands two thirds of the way up the side of the inner dish and is still standing there at the end: filled only to the halfway mark, the upper band sets hard and pale long before the centre moves, and water lapping the rim or splashed over the top has thinned the surface into a loose, watery skin.
- The bath is silent, steaming, with at most one slow bubble rising at the wall of the outer vessel, held between 80C and 85C (176F and 185F). Any chatter of the dish against the base, any steady string of bubbles, any rolling of the surface means the water has run to 100C (212F) and the damage is already done.
- Nudged, the centre trembles as one piece, a coin of movement in a face that is otherwise still. A ripple that travels outward in waves means it is still liquid beneath the skin; a face that does not move at all has been carried past the set and will eat firm and grainy.
- Cut, the face is dense and glossy from edge to edge: no honeycomb of small bubbles along the outer band, and no bead of clear liquid weeping from the cut or pooling between the set and the side of the dish, which is the mark of protein wrung out by heat.
- It left the water before it was done and rested clear of it: the centre reads 78C (172F) as it is lifted out and climbs to roughly 82C (180F) standing. Anything left sitting in the hot bath after the heat was cut has gone on cooking, and it reaches the pass tight and split however well it looked when it went in.
Where it goes wrong The bath was pushed too hot and allowed to boil, usually an outer vessel set over direct heat that was never turned down, or a bath topped up part way through with boiling water, so the mixture against the wall of the dish ran past 85C (185F) and its protein seized and squeezed out its liquid. The outer band is pitted and grainy, a ring of watery liquid weeps into the dish as soon as it is cut, and the centre is still slack, because the outside was overcooked long before the middle set.
Tempering a custard 59 recipes
- The hot liquid went into the eggs a little at a time with constant whisking, and only then did everything go back to the pot.
- The heat under it stayed gentle throughout and it was never allowed to boil.
- Stirred continuously and right into the corners of the pan, where it thickens first and sets unnoticed.
- Judged by behaviour: it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and hold a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- Taken off before it looks finished, and strained. Residual heat carries it the rest of the way, and a custard held on the heat until it looks right arrives past right.
Where it goes wrong The hot liquid went in too fast, or the pot went back over full heat to save time. The yolks set into threads before they could thicken smoothly, and a scrambled custard does not come back; straining hides a little of it and nothing hides the rest.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chardonnay (village Burgundy)
- Also Right
- Chenin Blanc
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Verbena iced tea
Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.
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