No. 1834

Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Beranger

Filets ou Ailes de Poulet a la Beranger

Raise the fillets or wings with the pinions attached from six roasted chickens of two pounds each, having them well larded and not too much cooked; pare nicely, suppressing the skin and lay them in a sautoir with well buttered cream bechamel (No. 411). Dress them in a circle with a crouton of unsmoked red beef tongue between each piece. Add some mushroom heads to the bechamel and use them to fill in the center of the circle; lay on top half-spherical decorated chicken quenelles and garnish around with small half heart bread croutons fried in butter and having their pointed ends dipped first in meat glaze (No. 402), then in chopped parsley. The word "ailes" should be used in preference to the word "filets" in making French menus, to avoid the repetition of this word which appear so often in French.

← No. 1833 Epigrammes of Chicken a la Volnay Chicken No. 1835 Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Bodisko →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly piece rather than a cooking recipe: the components are made separately and brought together warm. The hinge is that the breasts are deliberately underroasted, then finished gently in the sauce, so they arrive at the table just cooked rather than dried out.

The birdsRanhofer's two-pound roasting chickens are much smaller than a modern supermarket bird, closer to a small broiler or squab chicken. Two breasts from a 3.5-4 lb chicken will be far larger and thicker; three or four birds may give you the twelve pieces called for, and they will need paring down to a uniform size.
"With the pinions attached"The wing bone is left joined to the breast and scraped clean to give a handle, so the pieces stand up in the circle. Butchers who offer this cut generally call it an airline breast or suprême.
LardingLarding means threading strips of chilled pork fatback through the flesh with a larding needle before roasting. It exists because lean breast overcooks; a modern cook who cannot get fatback can bard the breasts with thin sheets of fat or caul instead, though the effect on the cut surface is different.
Cream béchamel, No. 411Cream bechamel, No. 411 -- Ranhofer's bechamel is a white roux moistened with milk and finished with cream; nineteenth-century versions of the sauce were often simmered with veal and aromatics, though the cross-referenced recipe is not reproduced here. A well-made modern bechamel enriched with cream and reduced until it coats is the working equivalent. "Well buttered" means finishing with butter off the heat.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a sauté pan with sloping sides. The breasts are laid in it in the sauce and warmed through over low heat; the sauce must not boil once the buttered finish is in, or it will break.
Unsmoked red beef tongueBrine-cured tongue, pink from the cure but not smoked, sold as pickled or corned tongue. It is cut into small flat croutons, the red against the white sauce giving the colour contrast as well as some savour. Cured tongue is still available from delis and some butchers; smoked tongue would overwhelm the bechamel.
Quenelles and meat glazeThe quenelles are a forcemeat of raw chicken, panade and cream, moulded in half-spherical spoons or moulds and poached below a simmer. Meat glaze (No. 402) is brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold; a commercial demi-glace reduced further will do for dipping the crouton points.
YieldTwelve fillets, one or two per person, serving six to twelve as part of a longer menu of the kind this book was written for.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summing-up of more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this dish shows the house style exactly: a French classical garnish, a named dedication, and a diagram-like arrangement in a circle with a filled centre. Beranger may be a nod to Pierre-Jean de Beranger, the French songwriter whose enormous nineteenth-century popularity would have made his name a natural label for a garnish, though the connection is only a guess, and Ranhofer never explains his dedications. The closing note on menu language is the more revealing part of the entry: Ranhofer is instructing his readers to write ailes de poulet rather than filets simply to keep the printed bill of fare from repeating a word, a reminder that in the Gilded Age dining room the menu card was a composed object in its own right and the kitchen was expected to serve its prose as well as its guests.