No. 1827

Chicken Breasts a la Chevreuse

Estomacs de Poulet a la Chevreuse

Dip the breasts of two or three chickens in boiling water, lard them with some fillets of ham, and truffles cut the size shown (No. 4, Fig. 52), braise and as soon as cooked drain and arrange them against a triangle-shaped bread support; between each chicken lay a group of truffles, one of olives and another of quenelles; pour some supreme sauce (No. 547) around them and serve more in a sauce-boat.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's garnished entrée that assumes a brigade: larded breasts, a fried bread socle, three separate garnishes and a made sauce. Everything but the braising can be done in advance, which is how the original kitchen managed it.

The hinge: lard, then braise gentlyThe dip in boiling water is brief and appears to be there to firm the surface so the larding passes cleanly; it is not a poach. Braise the breasts covered in a little stock at a bare tremble and pull them as soon as they are just cooked through (165F internal) — supreme sauce will not rescue a breast braised to shreds.
Larding strips"Fillets" of ham and truffle here means thin batons; the recipe sizes them by reference to No. 4, Fig. 52, so roughly matchstick strips, threaded through the surface of the meat with a larding needle. Without the needle, cut deep slits with a paring knife and push the strips in; use dry-cured ham rather than boiled, which falls apart.
Supreme sauce (No. 547)A chicken velouté enriched with cream in the classical manner (mushroom essence, a butter finish and a little lemon are usual in sauces of this name). Any modern velouté-based sauce suprême stands in; keep it just thick enough to coat and do not let it boil after the cream goes in.
The bread supportA socle: crustless bread cut into a triangular prism, fried or oven-dried until hard, and used as a plinth to raise the breasts above the sauce. It is architecture, not eating. A shallow platter and a simple fan of the breasts serves the same purpose today.
QuenellesForcemeat dumplings, in this period a pounded chicken or veal panada bound with egg and cream, shaped between two spoons and poached below a simmer. A food processor does the pounding; keep the mixture cold or it will break.
Truffles and olivesThe truffles would have been black truffles, used in quantity as a garnish rather than an accent — an honest substitution is sautéed brown mushrooms, with a little truffle product if you want the note. The olives were most likely turned or stoned green olives; a brief blanch takes off the brine's edge.
YieldTwo or three chickens gives four to six breasts, so four to six servings as a plated entrée. Ranhofer wrote for a course in a long meal; as a main course, count one breast per person.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the encyclopedic record of his three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, written in the numbered, cross-referenced style of French professional cookery so that a cook could chase No. 547 or Fig. 52 through the book. "À la Chevreuse" is one of the hundreds of proper-name garnish formulas that structured nineteenth-century menus — the label told a trained reader what would be on the plate before the cover was lifted, in this case the larding with ham and truffle and the trio of truffles, olives and quenelles. The name is generally traced to the French ducal house of Chevreuse, as with Soubise, Conti and Béchamel; the connection is honorific rather than documented, and the garnish's composition varies between authorities. What the dish shows most plainly is the period's taste for elevation: the fried bread socle exists only so the meat can be seen above the sauce, a service convention that vanished with the shift from platter service to individually plated food.