Sauternes prepared food match?

I would like to give my wife's mother some prepared food to go with the bottle of 1997 Suduiraut Sauternes we're giving her. Ideally it would be the sort of thing I could make at home and she could just whip out of the fridge and serve without further preparation. I'm just not coming up with anything. Thoughts?

Walt

If to be served with a first course - cold pate de foie gras or a cold chicken liver pate served with an orange marmalade
If to be served with a main course - cold goose or duck confit perhaps with a raspberry sauce
If to be served as dessert - apple, peach or plum tarte

There's always a nice cheese plate with a blue cheese like Stilton included. That said, I'm going with Rogov's suggestions.

If she like sfoie gras, the answer is easy - buy a tin of FG and let her slice it up cold and enjoy it with the wine.

If she doesn't, or doesn't want to try that classic combination, the blue cheese (preferably a reasonably friendly one, not some superannuated Cabrales that the family dog would want to roll in before burying it in the garden) is also a very good choice.

I agree, foie gras, or foie gras pate' or terrine, would be a classic 1st course match.
Stilton or Roquefort or Gorgonzola dolce would be a good cheese course or solo match. If you want to jazz it up, serve the cheese on toast with sliced ripe pears.
For dessert, a mango pudding or mousse would be nice. Topped with whipped cream with a generous shot of vanilla.

A nice wedge of Humboldt Fog is a good combo. If you wanted to make a pear compote or something else like that to go on top, it would be even better.

years ago a group of the greatest sauterne producers were touring the country with Bill Blatch. they wanted to demonstrate that sauterne would go with an entire meal; and in each city they teamed with some of the finest local chefs to make such a meal. they had one free night and a group of us offered to try our best. we brought lots of different things to a private home with them. what fun. one of the better main course dishes was a scallop dish with a mild curry cream sauce. i brought a couple of roast veal tenderloins with a sauterne based bordelaise sauce i found in an older version of larousse. either of these plus the items above should prove memorable.

Here are my notes on such a dinner featuring 13 vintages of Ch. d'Yquem:

http://www.wineloverspage.com/user_submitted/wine_notes/3240.html

[Jenise]

years ago a group of the greatest sauterne producers were touring the country with Bill Blatch. they wanted to demonstrate that sauterne would go with an entire meal; and in each city they teamed with some of the finest local chefs to make such a meal. they had one free night and a group of us offered to try our best. we brought lots of different things to a private home with them. what fun. one of the better main course dishes was a scallop dish with a mild curry cream sauce. i brought a couple of roast veal tenderloins with a sauterne based bordelaise sauce i found in an older version of larousse. either of these plus the items above should prove memorable.

Sounds really incredible, would have loved to be part of something like that. In the 90's the Spectator had an article on just such an event where Wolfgang Puck did the food. This many years later I retain little memory of the details except the extent to which naturally-sweet ingredients like lobster and bridging components like jams and compotes played in the foods he prepped which I used as inspiration for an all-Madeira dinner I once cooked for.

years ago a group of the greatest sauterne producers were touring the country with Bill Blatch. they wanted to demonstrate that sauterne would go with an entire meal; and in each city they teamed with some of the finest local chefs to make such a meal. they had one free night and a group of us offered to try our best. we brought lots of different things to a private home with them. what fun. one of the better main course dishes was a scallop dish with a mild curry cream sauce. i brought a couple of roast veal tenderloins with a sauterne based bordelaise sauce i found in an older version of larousse. either of these plus the items above should prove memorable.

Sounds really incredible, would have loved to be part of something like that.

I agree. And that scallop with mild curry cream does sound promising. There's a tasty Roussillon dish that features partridge or guinea hen in a sauce of Banyuls, oranges and mellow whole garlic cloves that might work well. And then there was that famous nouvelle cuisine dish (Senderens?) of lobster with a vanilla sauce. I've always thought some of the richer, dark-sauced Chinese dishes had good potential with Sauternes as well.

According to Tim Hanni, Sauternes was frequently served with main and savory courses in the 19th century.

Thanks for your prepared food selections. I think I'll go with a ripe d'Anjou pear, a mild Danish blue (Roquefort would be too strong for her taste), and a tin of foie gras paté. It's Sauternes-In-A-Box!

Walt

It does sound like fun to construct meals around multiple Sauternes. But I'm guessing they used a range of aged vintages for some of the more savory dishes?

For another meal constructed around sweet wines similar to the one Bill described, see this post describing a dinner constructed by the chef Henri Gagneux around the sweet wines of the producers in SAPROS (as reported by Ian Hoare, who occasionally posts here).

Mark Lipton