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Epigrammes of Chicken Fillets
Cut off the fillets from three chickens, trim, put them into a sautepan with clarified butter, give them a curve in the pan, pour more butter over, place a sheet of buttered paper over all, set the pan in the oven or over the fire, and cook until the flesh is done. Cut off the legs, bone them, put them in a saucepan with a little mirepoix braise, take them out when done and press between them two dishes until cold; now dip them into warm reduced allemande sauce, next in breadcrumbs, then in egg and breadcrumbs again. Stick a piece of bone in the thin end of each, plunge them into boiling fat, and fry. Have ready a hollow croustade of bread, place in the center of a dish, arrange the fillets around alternately with the legs, fill the croustade with mushrooms or other puree, and serve with allemande sauce in a tureen.
A two-part restaurant dish: sautéed breast fillets plated alternately with breaded, deep-fried boned legs. Nothing here is difficult, but the legs must be pressed cold before breading or the coating will not hold.
- The hinge: press the legs coldBoned braised legs are wet and floppy. Weighting them flat between two dishes until fully chilled compacts them into a firm cutlet that will take three coatings and hold its shape in the fat. Warm legs will shed the crumbs.
- Three chickens, or one shopping tripSix breast fillets and six legs. Butcher-cut boneless breasts plus six whole legs is the practical substitute.
- "Give them a curve in the pan"Lay each fillet against the curved side of the pan so it sets in a crescent as it firms; the shaping appears to be for the look of the finished ring on the platter.
- Buttered paperA cartouche of parchment cut to fit the pan, buttered on the underside. It keeps the fillets moist without browning them. Foil works but traps more steam.
- Oven and donenessIf you finish them in the oven, a moderate oven of about 350F works. Breast fillets of this size need roughly 12-15 minutes; go by an internal 165F rather than by "until the flesh is done."
- Mirepoix braiseNot a modern mirepoix. Here it means a braising bed of diced carrot, onion, celery and a little bacon or ham fat, moistened with stock, in which the legs cook covered until tender: about 45 minutes at a bare simmer.
- Allemande sauceA velouté (white stock thickened with blond roux) finished with an egg-yolk-and-cream liaison and lemon. Reduce it until it coats a spoon thickly before using it as the first layer on the legs; a thin sauce will not grip. Once the yolks are in, keep it below a simmer.
- Breading orderRead it as sauce, crumbs, egg, crumbs. The initial crumb layer stops the egg sliding off the sauce. Fry at 350-360F until deep gold, three to four minutes, since the leg meat is already cooked through.
- CroustadeA hollowed loaf or a deep block of crustless bread, buttered and dried in a moderate oven until crisp, then filled at the last minute with a hot mushroom purée. Fill it early and it collapses.
- The bone handleA trimmed drumstick bone or short wooden skewer pushed into the narrow end, purely so the piece can be picked up. Cover exposed bone tips with a paper frill if you like the period look.
An épigramme in classical French cookery is a plate that pairs two different cuts of the same animal, cooked two different ways: the term is best known from lamb, where a slice of braised breast, breaded and fried, is served alongside a grilled cutlet. The joke behind it, often repeated in nineteenth-century kitchen literature, is that a fashionable diner once mistook a mention of witty epigrams for the name of a dish and ordered it. Oscar Tschirky's version transfers the idea to chicken, and it is characteristic of the Waldorf kitchen of the 1890s: one bird yields both a pale fillet sautéed in clarified butter under paper and a crisp fried leg cutlet, arranged in a ring around a bread croustade with the sauce passed separately in a tureen. The whole construction assumes a brigade with velouté and braising liquor already standing on the stove, which is exactly why dishes like this vanished from home cooking as domestic service disappeared.