Poularde à la Sainte-Alliance (Truffled Pullet with Ortolans and Foie Gras)

Ingredients

• about ten fine truffles
• salt and pepper
• butter
• a glass of excellent Madeira
• 1 fine poularde
• ortolans
• foie gras
• butter
• jus

Instructions

1. Season about ten fine truffles with salt and pepper and warm them in butter.
2. Moisten them with a glass of excellent Madeira and leave them to cool in a hermetically covered utensil.
3. Put the truffles inside the poularde.
4. Pot-roast the bird, timed so that it is ready exactly when it is to be served.
5. When it is ready, quickly cook as many ortolans, and sauté in butter as many slices of foie gras, as there are guests.
6. Send these to the dining room at the same time as the poularde, with the pot-roasting stock strained into a sauceboat.
7. At the table, with a burning chafing stove on the service table, lift the suprêmes swiftly and cut them into escalopes.
8. Place each escalope on a slice of foie gras already set on a hot plate, with one of the truffles from inside the bird.
9. Add an ortolan and a little jus to each plate.
10. Serve the plates to the guests immediately.