Welcome aboard crime readers and food lovers!  Today on Dining with the Dame we are reading 1935’s Death in The Clouds.  Our menu option includes a rather fancy-sounding French dish called Chicken Chaud-Froid. James Beard describes it as follows:

“Chaid-froid is a thickened sauce of butter, flour, broth and cream which may be mixed with geliatin and is used to cover poultry…use this sauce to dip the bird…Decorate with truffles, tarragon, blanched almonds, mushroom caps, sliced olives or vegetables”

Well, my budget doesn’t run to truffles but I have made you a Chicken Chaud-Froid inspired by Death in The Clouds!

Death in The Clouds – The Plot

The stewards on a plane from London to Calais are shocked to find one of the passengers, Madame Giselle, dead in her seat.  Some marks on her neck indicate that she may have had a reaction to a wasp sting.  A dead wasp is also found on the plane.  However. Hercule Poirot who is also a passenger on the plane discovers an African blow dart on the floor and deduces that Madame Giselle, a moneylender to the rich and famous, has been murdered.  But who on the plane wanted her dead?

We have:

• Lady Horbury, formerly an actress, who is addicted to both gambling and cocaine
• Venetia Kerr, a member of the aristocracy and childhood friend of Lord Horbury
• Jane Grey, a hairdresser’s assistant coming home from a holiday funded by a large win on a horse
• Norman Gale, dentist and admirer of Jane Grey
• Armand Dupont and his son Jean, French archaeologists
• Doctor Bryant of Harley Street
• James Ryder, a businessman who has failed to make a deal that could keep his company afloat
• Mystery writer Daniel Clancy

Eleven passengers in the cabin including Poirot plus two stewards (no spoilers here but none of them did it).  The twelfth passenger was murdered by a blowdart.  And no one saw a thing.

This is a classic closed circle mystery.  We know one of the passengers did Madame Giselle in.  But who?  Poirot figures out who by page 70 in my edition.  He just doesn’t understand why!  I also figured out who on my first read BUT it was more about me disliking the character and WANTING them to the murderer rather than any true detecting.  However, I read this book again last week to refresh my memory of it and the clues are there in plain sight so a careful reading could get you there!

Death in The Clouds – The Covers

I would like to call out the pulpy looking cover on the bottom row second from the right.  Madame Giselle’s ugliness is mentioned several times in Death in The Clouds. If that lovely blonde lady is someone’s idea of hideously ugly (Christie’s words, not mine) then that person’s standards are ridiculously high!!!

The Recipe – Chicken Chaud Froid

I’ll be very honest here.  The chicken Chaud froid was not to my taste at all.  I ended up scraping all the cold jellied velouté off the chicken and making a sandwich with the chicken breast.  If cold creamy gelatine chicken is your thing…go for it!  For the rest of us….let’s all have a little giggle at my ridiculous attempts to make a wasp out of olives and tomatoes and a plane out of carrot and olives and forget this recipe ever exists.

The recipe I used which is from the 60th Anniversary edition of the James Beard Fireside Cookbook doesn’t actually tell you how to cook the chicken.  So, let’s start you off with a basic recipe for poached chicken. And take it from there.

Here’s Jame’s Beard’s take:

And here is his veloute recipe:

From Mr Clancy’s house they took a taxi to The Monseigneur, where they found Norman Gale waiting for them.  Poirot ordered some consommé and a chaud-froid of chicken.

-Agatha Christie – Death in the Clouds

The Monseigneur was actually a restaurant in Jermyn Street London in the 1930’s.  Here is a picture of the interior.

Other Food & Drinks Mentioned in Death In The Clouds

• Cold Tongue
• Soda Water and Thin Captain Biscuits
• Coffee (several mentions)
• Cheese and Biscuits
• The meal served on the plane included soup, meat and vegetables, salad, dessert, tea and coffee. (All on a journey from Calais to London which is all of 151 km.   These days on a trip from Melbourne to Sydney which is 713 km  you’d be lucky to get a pack of peanuts!)
• Soup
• Tea
• A “frenchified” meal at Poirot’s apartment.  I would LOVE to know what this was!
• Irish Stew
• Omelette aux champignons
• Sole a la Normand
• Port Salut Cheese
• Kidneys at breakfast
• Orange Juice
• Tea and Muffins
• Bananas and Beer
• Consommé
• Sausages and Mash
• Sherry / Aperitifs

There is a lot more to say about Death in The Clouds but they would be out of place in a regular Dining With The Dame post like this.  This is why next week, we are going to have a Death in The Clouds recap. With a cocktail of course.

Our March Read will be The ABC Mystery which is another Poirot mystery but a lot darker than Death in The Clouds.

 Happy reading and eating!