No. 1844

Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Harrison

Filets ou Ailes de Poulet a la Harrison

Pare twelve raw chicken fillets to the shape of half hearts; lift off the minion fillets and remove the sinews and fine skin which covers, then cut six bias incisions through half of the thickness of these minions and in each of them lay a thin round slice of truffle. Place the fillets in a buttered sautoir and the scored minions on top lengthwise, pour butter over and cover with a strong buttered paper; cook for ten to twelve minutes on a slow fire. Prepare some boned terrapin a la Maryland (No. 1085); spread a quarter inch thick layer of this on a baking sheet and when cold cut it up into oblong pieces, one and three-quarters wide by three and a half long; dip these pieces in eggs and bread-crumbs, and fry to a fine color; drain, wipe and dress the fillets flat on these terrapin crusts. Pour a little half-glaze (No. 400) with Madeira in the bottom of the dish and serve with a separate sauce-boat of espagnole sauce (No. 414) into which squeeze the juice of an orange, adding a dash of cayenne pepper, meat glaze (No. 402) and plenty of butter.

← No. 1843 Chicken Fillets or Wings a la Genin Chicken No. 1845 Chicken Fillets and Breasts a la Lorenzo →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer builds this from three separate recipes in The Epicurean, and the base layer is the problem: the crusts are made from cooked diamondback terrapin, which cannot be obtained legally today in most of the United States. The chicken work is worth reading for its technique, but the dish as printed is not makeable.

The terrapin is the blockerDiamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) was fished nearly to collapse by the early twentieth century and is now protected or its harvest closed outright across most of its range, with commercial sale prohibited in the states that once supplied the trade. There is no legitimate market source for the boned terrapin this recipe assumes. Cook a current recipe for the chicken if you want the dish on a plate.
"Minion fillets"The filet mignon of a chicken breast is the small tender that lies against the underside, which Ranhofer lifts off, de-sinews and scores to hold truffle slices. On modern supermarket breasts the tender is often already removed and sold separately.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow sauté pan, not a saucepan. The fillets are laid flat in a single layer, not crowded.
"A slow fire" and buttered paperThe fillets cook gently in butter under a paper cover, buttered so it does not stick; Ranhofer does not specify whether the paper is pressed onto the surface or laid over the pan. Low heat, ten to twelve minutes; check the fillets for doneness (165F) rather than trusting the clock.
The cross-referenced saucesHalf-glaze (No. 400) is demi-glace; espagnole (No. 414) is the brown mother sauce it is built from; meat glaze (No. 402) is stock reduced to a syrup. Each is a substantial preparation set out elsewhere in the book, which is why this entry reads like shorthand.
MeasurementsRanhofer gives dimensions rather than weights — a quarter-inch layer, pieces 1 times as printed, one and three-quarters wide by three and a half long. Twelve fillets and twelve garnished minions; the recipe does not state how many it serves.

A Little History

Terrapin was the great luxury of American hotel and club cooking between roughly 1850 and 1910, and priced accordingly; Baltimore and Philadelphia kitchens made it a matter of civic pride, and "terrapin à la Maryland" was its standard form. Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working archive, which explains both the dedications to patrons and the endless internal cross-references. Dishes named for individuals were the house's currency: a regular customer, a visiting dignitary or a public figure would be honored with a composition, and the name then stuck in the book. The scale of demand suggested by pages like this one is often cited among the pressures that led to the diamondback terrapin being protected within a generation.