Chicken, Princess Style

Chicken cutlets in sherry with beef tongue and truffles.

Cut off the fillets from five chickens, pare and flatten them a little with a knifehandle. Shape their largest sides a good round, trim them to a point to resemble cutlets, sprinkle over with salt and cover with a cloth. Take a saucepan and put in it five ounces of butter, melt, let it settle, and pass it through a strainer. Make some highly-flavored forcemeat from the flesh off the legs, put it into a well-buttered plain border mould, and place it in the bain-marie to poach. In the meantime, boil a pickled beef tongue in salted water, and keep it hot; peel fifteen small raw truffles, and keep them covered over until wanted. Next prepare some stock with the bones of the birds, vegetables, sweet herbs, white wine and broth. When cooked strain it, add the truffle trimmings and reduce it to half glaze; add its equal bulk of brown sauce and boil for a few minutes; then pass it through a cloth into another smaller saucepan, put in the raw truffles, add two or three tablespoonfuls of sherry and boil again very slowly for eight or nine minutes. Now pour the clarified butter into a flat saucepan, put the fillets in close to each other, place the pan on the fire and cook them on both sides for about two minutes, then take them out and drain well. Take out the tongue, drain, skin and cut it up, in a slanting direction, into as many slices as there are fillets, shaping them like these. Now turn the border out onto a dish, and place the fillets and slices of tongue, glazed with a paste brush, alternately around it, with the truffles in the center. Pour a little of the sauce over the truffles, and serve the remainder in a boat.