Poularde Louise d’Orléans

Poularde Louise d’Orléans (pullet with truffled foie gras sealed in pastry) teaches the discipline of enclosed cooking: hold every drop of fat and perfume close, but give pressure one deliberate escape. Before you touch a pan, know the one true thing: the slit in the crown is functional, not decorative. Let it seal and the case can split; keep it open and the poularde bastes inside its shelter of truffle, bacon, and foie gras.

The grand kitchen assumed a saucier with succulent veal stock never off the fire, enough hands to cool the foie while the bird was readied, and a pastry bench built for wrapping whole poultry. It did not need a salamander for this preparation, and neither do you. A narrow saucepan makes three cups of stock deep enough to poach, a rimmed home tray carries a four-serving poularde, and a probe thermometer verifies the dense center. The stockpot scale and extra hands are brigade scaffolding, so they go; the truffle-studded foie, the twenty-minute butter colouring, the truffle and bacon cloak, the plain sealed paste, and the full one-and-three-quarter-hour bake are the dish, so they stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Hot, the foie gras softens into the poultry juices and the black truffle perfumes every cut. Cold, those juices set around the foie and give richly marbled slices. The paste will be firm because it is a cooking case, not a tender pie crust. Seal every seam tightly, then keep that top slit open from oven door to table; that is the step that decides the whole magnificent thing.