Giblet Pie

Pâté d’abatis (giblet pie) teaches one unbending rule: the filling must be cold before puff paste touches it. Obey that, and the lid rises into crisp, butter-gold layers above tender giblets and a light, gleaming sauce. Ignore it, and warmth from below softens the butter between those layers, so the pastry stews before it can bake.

The old formula assumed a consommé pot never off the fire and puff paste waiting at the pastry bench. At home, good prepared chicken consommé and all-butter puff pastry are the honest equivalents. Making both from the beginning was brigade scaffolding, so it can go. Here the quantity is scaled for four, and the gizzard and heart begin ahead of the liver because they do not share a cooking clock. The flavourings and sequence remain spare, exactly as the dish intends: giblets, butter, flour, consommé, pastry.

What must stay is the dish itself: brown the giblets, singer them with flour, moisten with only enough consommé to cover, cook them three-parts toward tenderness, then cool the filling quickly and completely. One cook, one stove, one evening. Before you reach for the pastry, press a spoon into the middle of the filling and make certain there is no warmth hiding underneath.