Recipe no. 356 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 172.
Ingredients
- thrushes from the Alps
- foie gras
- truffle
- pork fat
- egg
- shortcrust pastry
Preparation
- Prepare the thrushesChoose 12 fine collerets thrushes, just properly high. Bone and arrange on a plate seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, fine spices.
- Prepare the stuffingWith the crop of 3 thrushes, foie gras, truffle and pork fat, prepare a fine stuffing. Season and strain through a sieve.
- Fill the thrushesPut a spoonful of stuffing on each thrush. Roll into balls.
- Wrap in pastryCut rounds of shortcrust pastry (10 cm). Set a thrush in the middle, moisten the edges with a brush, fold to enclose.
- Finish the pastryMoisten lightly. Apply a fluted round of pastry over it. Glaze with beaten egg.
- CookBake in a lively oven: brisk at the start to set the pastry (which cannot lose its shape), then slow down until fully cooked. Twenty minutes total.
- ServeServe with a game fumet sauce made with the carcasses and innards.
Reboul's text
Choose 12 fine thrushes from the Alps, known as collerets, just high enough to tenderise their flesh and heighten their aroma, but not too much so; bone them and arrange them on a plate seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg and fine spices.
With the crop of three other thrushes, 50 grams of foie gras, a truffle of the same weight, fresh and fragrant, then 50 grams of pork fat, prepare a fine stuffing; season and strain through a sieve.
Put on each thrush a spoonful of this stuffing and roll them into balls.
On a sheet of fine shortcrust pastry, cut out rounds of 10 centimetres in diameter with a cutter; set a thrush in the middle of each of these rounds; moisten the edges with a brush and fold them skilfully to fully enclose the thrush. Moisten lightly and apply over it a round of the same pastry cut with a fluted cutter; glaze with beaten egg and bake in a lively oven; twenty minutes of cooking should be enough, this a little brisk at the start in order to set the pastry, which then cannot lose its shape; slow it down afterwards until fully cooked.
Serve at the same time as the thrushes a sauce made with game fumet using the carcasses and the innards.
Small Provençal glossary for this recipe
Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.
| Provençal | English |
|---|---|
| chausi | to choose |
| desoussa | to bone |
| assaboura | to season |
| farço | stuffing |
| roula | to roll |
| coupa | to cut with a cutter |
| bagna | to moisten |
| replega | to fold |
| bagnouleja | to moisten lightly |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 356, page 172. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.