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Chicken Quenelles, Breaded
After having prepared the quenelles as above, boil them and drain well. When cold dip in beaten egg; roll in bread crumbs and place in a frying pan with very hot fat. Cook three minutes. Serve with fried parsley.
A finishing method rather than a full recipe: it assumes you have already made the chicken quenelle forcemeat from the entry above, and turns the poached dumplings into something closer to a croquette. Two things decide whether it works — how gently the quenelles are cooked in the first place, and how hot the fat is at the end.
- You need the preceding recipe"as above" refers to the book's own chicken quenelle entry, which must be consulted for the forcemeat itself. Any modern chicken quenelle or mousseline forcemeat will behave the same way here.
- "Boil them" means poach"Boil them" -- in practice quenelles are better set in barely trembling water or light stock than at a rolling boil, which can make the forcemeat swell and break up. Reckon on roughly five to eight minutes depending on size, until firm to the touch and floating.
- Chill them properlyThe instruction to dip when cold is the hinge. Warm quenelles are too soft to hold a crumb coat and will burst in the fat. Drain on a rack, then refrigerate at least an hour until firm.
- Fat temperature"Very hot fat" for a three-minute fry is 350-375F. Deeper than the quenelles so they float; any less and the crumb absorbs fat before it colours. Three minutes is enough because the interior is already cooked — you are only crisping the shell.
- Frying pan or deep fatThe recipe calls only for a frying pan with very hot fat, which may mean a fair depth of fat rather than a sauté. A heavy saucepan with two inches of neutral oil is easier to hold at temperature.
- Fried parsleyWell-dried curly parsley sprigs dropped into the same fat for 10-15 seconds, until they stop sputtering and turn brilliant green, then salted. Wet parsley will spit violently; spin or blot it thoroughly first.
- Yield and servingThe recipe specifies no quantities. As a rough guide only, a forcemeat made from about a pound of chicken might give something like sixteen to twenty quenelles the size of a small egg. Serve immediately -- the crumb softens within minutes.
Quenelles are French in name and technique: quenelle is generally traced to the German Knödel, dumpling, and the dish belonged to the professional repertoire that household books were busy simplifying for cooks without a brigade. In classical service a quenelle is poached and sauced, and its whole virtue is delicacy; breading and frying one is a distinctly domestic move. Fried parsley as a garnish appears constantly in books of this period — it used the fat already in the pan and supplied the flash of green that a plate of pale fried food otherwise lacks.