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Supreme of Fillets of Chicken
Take three very fat young birds, clean and scald the legs in hot water. Cut off the fillets, trim and flatten the large ones, stick two of the small fillets together to form one, put them into a sautepan, cover with melted butter and sprinkle with a little salt. Fry them lightly on both sides until they are quite firm and done. Drain off the butter from the pan, add three tablespoonfuls of highly seasoned bechamel sauce to the gravy that is left and hold the pan over the fire, moving it constantly so as not to let the sauce boil. Put the fillets on a dish, place small pieces of fried bread between them, pour the sauce over, and serve.
Supreme of Chickens, Rothschild Style Have ready chicken supreme prepared as for Toulouse, but stuffing with puree of chestnuts instead of the chicken forcemeat. Mince two truffles very fine, mix with one pint of hot puree of chestnuts, arrange the hot puree on a hot dish, place six croutons of fried bread over this, arrange the supreme over the croutons and decorate the top of each right in the center with one cooked mushroom.
Supreme of Chickens, Toulouse Style Take three chickens, singe, draw and wipe; remove the skin from the breasts; make an incision on top of the breastbone from end to end and with a sharp knife carefully cut off the entire breast on each side, including the small wing bone, which must not be separated. Under each breast will be found a small fillet; carefully remove it and place on a dish for future use. With a sharp knife make an incision three inches in length by one inch in depth in each breast at the thinner end, season the insides with salt and pepper equally distributed and stuff them with two ounces of chicken forcemeat mixed with two truffles and four mushrooms also finely sliced. Butter a copper sautepan and lay in gently the six breasts. Take each small fillet and press it gently with the fingers to give it shape; then make six small slanting incisions on top of each and insert in these slices of truffle cut with a tube half an inch in diameter. Slightly moisten the top of every breast with water, carefully arrange one fillet on top of each lengthwise and sprinkle over a little clarified butter, using a feather brush. Pour into the pan but not over the supreme a quarter of a wineglassful of Madeira wine and two tablespoonfuls of mushroom liquor, tightly cover with the lid and place it in the hot oven for ten minutes. Pour one pint of hot Toulouse garnishing on a hot dish, take out the supreme from the oven, neatly arrange it over the garnish, adjust paper ruffles on each wing bone, and serve at once.
Three related preparations of boneless chicken breast in the French manner, written for a brigade with a butcher and a saucier on hand. The techniques hold up; the vocabulary and the equipment need translation.
- What a supreme isA supreme is the skinless boneless breast, here taken off with the wing bone left attached (now sold as a frenched or airline breast). The "small fillet" beneath each breast is the tenderloin. Three birds yield six supremes and six tenderloins.
- Birds to buy"Three very fat young birds" means three roasting chickens; the book gives no weight. A modern supermarket chicken is bred breastier than a bird of the 1890s, so fewer birds may yield comparable meat, but the dish needs six breasts with the wing bone intact for the ruffles, so buy three.
- The sauce must not boilThis is the hinge of the first recipe. The pan sauce is buttery pan juices loosened with béchamel, and it is held over heat and swirled constantly precisely so it stays below a simmer. Let it boil and the butter breaks out and the sauce turns greasy and thin.
- Cook to temperature, not to firmness"Quite firm and done" was a reasonable cue for a lean 19th-century bird but overshoots a modern breast badly. Pull the fillets at 160-165F at the thickest point; a plain breast fillet needs roughly 3 to 4 minutes a side in butter over medium heat.
- "Hot oven"In period usage this is somewhere around 400-450F. Ten minutes covered at that heat is about right for a stuffed breast, but check the center with a thermometer rather than trusting the clock.
- WineglassfulA period wineglass held about 2 to 2½ fl oz, so a quarter of one is roughly a tablespoon. The measure is genuinely loose; a tablespoon of Madeira plus the two tablespoons of mushroom liquor is enough to steam six breasts in a tightly covered pan without stewing them.
- Copper sautepan, feather brushThe copper is for even, responsive heat; any heavy skillet with a tight lid that will go in the oven does the same job. A feather brush was used for clarified butter in kitchens of this period; a modern pastry brush serves the same purpose.
- Toulouse garnishNot defined here because Oscar assumed it. Classically it is a ragout bound in velouté with chicken quenelles, button mushrooms, and in the old form cockscombs, kidneys and sweetbreads. A pint of quenelles, mushrooms and a light velouté gives the sense of it.
- Truffles and chestnutsThe truffles are the expensive gesture; sliced preserved black truffle or a good truffle paste stands in, and finely diced brown mushroom carries the look if not the perfume. For the Rothschild version, vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts puréed with a little chicken stock and butter make the pint of purée quickly.
- YieldSix portions in the Toulouse and Rothschild versions, one supreme apiece. Note that the fried bread is placed between the fillets in the first preparation, and under the supremes only in the Rothschild version.
Oscar Tschirky came to the Waldorf as maître d'hôtel in 1893 and put his name to The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896, a nine-hundred-page compendium that ranges from plain household cookery to the full French repertoire the hotel's dining rooms actually served. These three entries belong squarely to the latter: suprême as a cut and a preparation is Parisian kitchen language, and the garnish names are the standard shorthand of that system. "Toulouse" denotes the white ragout of quenelles, mushrooms and offal bound in velouté that is generally traced to earlier 19th-century French practice, while "Rothschild" is one of the many luxury garnishes named for the banking family, and like most of them it means truffles and something costly, here chestnut purée. That Oscar could print "prepared as for Toulouse" without further explanation says a good deal about who he expected to be reading: not the home cook, but someone trained in a kitchen where those words were already a recipe.