Home › Chafing-Dish Dainties › Supreme of Chicken
Supreme of Chicken
Chop fine the breast of a raw chicken. Beat one egg, add the chicken, and continue beating until smooth; then add three eggs, one at a time, beating each egg in thoroughly. Add a generous teaspoonful of salt, a saltspoonful of white pepper, a dash of black pepper and one pint of cream.
Butter twelve small moulds and ornament them with truffles. Fill with the chicken mixture, cover with buttered paper, and steam twenty minutes.
Or, put in a pan of boiling water and cook in a moderate oven till the centres are firm. Serve with mushroom or bechamel sauce. These can be cooked and left in the moulds and then reheated.
It will take about fifteen minutes to reheat.
A chicken mousseline custard set in small moulds — light, rich, and entirely dependent on keeping the mixture cold and the cooking gentle.
- Keep everything coldThe hinge of the dish is temperature. Chill the chicken, the eggs and the cream, and work quickly; if the mixture warms while you beat, the cream and egg will separate in the mould and weep liquid as they cook.
- Chop fine means very fineThe original expects hand-chopping. A food processor does it in seconds — pulse the raw breast to a smooth paste, add the first egg, then the remaining three one at a time, then the cream in a slow stream. Do not run the machine long enough to heat the mixture.
- QuantitiesOne pint of cream is 2 cups. A saltspoonful is a quarter teaspoon. The recipe calls only for the breast of one raw chicken against four eggs and a pint of cream.
- Moderate ovenUsually taken as somewhere around 350-375F. The moulds sit in a pan of boiling water reaching halfway up their sides; the water should never boil in the oven, or the custards will pit and toughen.
- DonenessTwenty minutes steaming is right for small dariole moulds of about 3 oz. Bake and they may want 25-30 minutes. The centres should be just firm and a thermometer should read 165F — this is a raw poultry and egg mixture, so cook it through rather than leaving it soft-set.
- TrufflesThin rounds of truffle pressed onto the buttered mould before filling appear as a dark pattern when turned out. Truffle peelings or a black olive slice give the same visual effect at a fraction of the cost; truffle oil will not, since the point is the pattern.
- ReheatingThe fifteen minutes given is most plausibly fifteen minutes back in the steamer or water bath rather than dry heat, though the recipe does not say. Cover them again with buttered paper or foil so the surfaces do not skin.
- YieldTwelve small moulds, two to a plate, serves six as a first course. Mushroom sauce or bechamel is not optional garnish — unsauced, the custards read as bland.
The dish is a straightforward Anglo-American translation of the French mousseline forcemeat: raw white meat pounded with egg and enriched with cream, then poached in a water bath so the protein sets without ever boiling. Escoffier-era kitchens built quenelles, mousses and suprêmes on this general principle, and the name suprême attached itself both to the boned breast of a bird and to the pale sauce served with it. Its appearance in a chafing-dish and salad book may reflect what is often said to be a turn-of-the-century American enthusiasm for small, elegant, individually moulded courses that a hostess could prepare in advance — the closing note that the moulds may be cooked, held and reheated in fifteen minutes is the practical heart of the recipe, and the reason a French restaurant preparation found its way into a household manual.