No. 123

Parsley Bouquet, in Branches, Fried or Chopped

Persil en Bouquet, en Branches, Frit ou Hache

Plain Bouquet or Bunch of Parsley.—Take about one ounce of parsley branches, including the leaves, wash them nicely and fold them in such a manner that they form a small bundle or fagot, to be tied with a piece of string.

The Garnished Bouquet of Parsley.—Make it exactly the same as the plain bouquet the only difference being that it envelopes various aromatics, such as thyme, bayleaf, clove of garlic, basil, marjoram, chives, green celery, etc. When we speak of a garnished bunch of parsley without any specification, we mean garnished with a bayleaf and a small twig of thyme.

Parsley in Branches for garnishing should be taken from well washed, very green parsley, from which the coarser stalks have been removed; keep it in fresh water and use when needed, draining it first: for garnishing fish, boiled beef, etc.

Fried Parsley is used as an accessory to fried dishes; it is not a garnishing, but simply a decoration; detach some leaves from some very green parsley, wash them in cold water, drain, press them in the hand or in a cloth to extract all the water, and when dry, lay them in a wire basket to plunge into boiling fat; drain as soon as they stiffen.

Chopped Parsley.—Choose very green parsley, wash, drain and press it so as to extract all the water, then cut it up as finely as possible, afterward chopping it well; wash it again, drain and squeeze it thoroughly to remove all the water; lay it on a cloth sieve and leave it in a cool place till needed.

← No. 122 Wheat and Rice Flour Panada Elementary Methods No. 124 Almond Paste for Fancy Cakes →

For the Modern Kitchen

Four separate parsley preparations, all of them still standard restaurant practice. The only one with real technique in it is the fried parsley, and the only one people routinely get wrong is the chopped.

Dry the parsley before it meets the fatThis is the hinge of the fried parsley. Any water clinging to the leaves will flash to steam in hot fat and throw it out of the pan. Press hard in a towel and let the leaves sit until genuinely dry, then lower them in a basket or spider rather than dropping them loose.
Fat temperature and timeRanhofer gives no number: use 350-375F. The leaves stiffen and turn a deep, translucent green in roughly 10 to 20 seconds. Past that they brown and turn bitter, so lift them the moment they stop bubbling hard.
One ounce of parsleyAbout 28 g, a modest handful of stems and leaves, rather less than a whole supermarket bunch. The book does not say what volume of liquid a bouquet this size is meant to season.
"Garnished" means bouquet garniThe garnished bunch is what a modern French recipe calls a bouquet garni. The book's default of parsley, bay and a sprig of thyme is still the default. Tie it with kitchen twine and leave a long tail hanging over the pot rim so it can be pulled out in one motion.
Wash the chopped parsley twiceThe second wash, after chopping, is not fussiness. It rinses away the bruised cell juice that makes chopped parsley clump, stain and taste grassy. Squeezed dry in a corner of a towel it comes out loose and separate, and will sprinkle rather than fall in wet clots.
"Cloth sieve" and cool storageA fine strainer lined with a doubled square of muslin does the same job. Ranhofer says only to keep it in a cool place until needed; refrigerated, chopped parsley will not hold long, while the picked branches kept in cold water last somewhat better.
Curly versus flat-leafThe Epicurean does not specify a variety, though curly parsley was the common American type of the period and suits both the branch garnish and frying. Flat-leaf is often preferred for flavor in a bouquet or chopped.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole of that kitchen's practice, beginning with the small preparations a cook had to know before touching a dish. Entries like this one are the grammar of the book: parsley in four grammatical cases, each with its own use. The tied bundle he calls a fagot — the word for a bundle of firewood, and the older English name for what is now universally the bouquet garni — was already the standard way of getting the flavor of herbs into a liquid without leaving debris in it, in an era when stocks were strained but sauces were expected to be flawless. Fried parsley, which he is careful to classify as decoration rather than garnish, was one of the period's signatures on fried fish and croquettes, and its near-disappearance from restaurant plates says more about changing taste in ornament than about the technique, which works exactly as described.