Garde Manger · Starter
Chicken Liver Parfait, Butter-Emulsion Method
- 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
- 400 g chicken livers, trimmed of sinew and any green stain
- 400 g unsalted butter
- 200 g whole egg, about 4 medium
- 100 g ruby port
- 100 g madeira
- 50 g shallot, sliced
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 sprig thyme
- 13 g fine salt, 1.2 percent of the total mix
- 1.5 g curing salt at 6.25 percent sodium nitrite, optional for a pink set
- 200 g milk, for soaking
- 100 g clarified butter, for the seal
Equipment
Blender · Bain-marie · Fine sieve
The skills inside
Building an emulsionThe water bathBrining & curingStraining & passing through a sieve
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
- Soak the trimmed livers in the milk at 4C (39F) for 6 hours, then drain and pat dry; the milk draws out blood that otherwise reads metallic and sets a dull grey. 360 min
- Reduce the port, madeira, shallot, garlic and thyme to 60 g, a loose syrup that leaves a clear trail on the pan base, then strain and cool.
- Blend the livers, eggs, reduction and salts to a smooth liquid, pass through a fine chinois pressing with a ladle, and warm the puree over a bain-marie to 50C (122F).
- With the blender running, pour in butter melted to 55C (131F) in a steady thread, until the mix is glossy and pours like double cream; stay inside 45C (113F) to 65C (149F) throughout.
- Pour into a terrine, cover, and bake at 100C (212F) in a bain-marie of 80C (176F) water to a core of 63C (145F), about 45 minutes, when a tap on the mould no longer sends a ripple across the surface. 45 min
- Chill overnight, then flood the top with clarified butter at 40C (104F) to a depth of 4 mm and set.
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.
Building an emulsion 40 recipes
- It visibly thickens as the fat goes in, heavier and more opaque than either part was alone, which is the emulsion announcing itself.
- At no point is there a pool of free fat sitting ahead of the work: fat went in no faster than it disappeared into the body.
- Glossy and homogeneous, with no slick floating on top and no visible droplets standing apart in it.
- It clings: coating what it is put on and holding a line, rather than running off and splitting into a puddle at the plate’s edge.
- It survives standing: minutes later there is no ring of weeping liquid underneath and no film of fat breaking out on the surface.
Where it goes wrong The fat went in faster than the shear could break it up, or the temperature drifted out of the range the method needs: it breaks into grease over a thin liquid, and whisking the broken thing harder does nothing. The rescue is a fresh base, with the broken sauce worked into it slowly, as if it were the fat.
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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