No. 1845

Chicken Fillets and Breasts a la Lorenzo

Filets et Ailes de Poulets a la Lorenzo

Raise the breasts with the fillets from six young, one pound and three-quarters to two pound chickens; lift off the skin and epidermis, also the minion fillets; place the breasts on a buttered baking sheet with the minions scored with truffles on top, laying them along the thick edge of the breasts; pour over butter and cover with buttered paper, then cook in a moderate oven; garnish the minions with paper frills (No. 10). Dress crown-shaped and fill the inside with a Lorenzo garnishing made as follows:

Lorenzo Garnishing.—Have espagnole sauce (No. 414) with a few tarragon leaves added, celery cut in one inch pieces, blanched and cooked in broth (194a); blanched olives stoned and filled with quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) containing anchovies, whole chestnuts cooked in broth; artichoke bottoms pared into half hearts, five-sixteenths inch squares of truffles and some large capers. The border for chicken breasts a la Lorenzo, are made oval and in the following manner: Butter a mold (Fig. 139) with butter softened without being melted; decorate the sides either with fanciful cuts of truffles, or tongue, or even both; fill it up with cream forcemeat (No. 75) or quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) and lay this border in a sautoir; pour boiling water around, set it in a slow oven and when poached, meaning when firm to the touch, unmold and dress the breasts on top and the garnishing in the center.

← No. 1844 Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Harrison Chicken No. 1846 Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Lucullus →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a Delmonico's plated dish in three parts: the poached forcemeat border, the butter-roasted breasts, and the garnish. The hinge is the breasts themselves — small, skinless, and unprotected on a sheet pan, they are done in minutes and dry out the moment they pass it.

Read the parts before startingThe mousseline border must be moulded and poached, the garnish elements each cooked separately, and the sauce made, all before the chicken goes near the oven. Ranhofer wrote for a brigade; a single cook should treat the border and garnish as make-ahead work.
Minion fillets and epidermisThe filet mignon of a chicken is the small tenderloin lying under the breast. The "epidermis" is the thin translucent membrane on the skinned breast, which shrinks and curls if left on. Scoring the minions with truffles means cutting shallow slits and inserting slices so they show as dark bands.
Oven and timingA moderate oven is usually taken as somewhere around 350F. Breasts from a 1/2-2 lb bird are small, and buttered and covered with paper they should be cooked through in roughly 10 to 15 minutes; take them to 165F internal. The original gives no time because a chef judged by touch; use a thermometer.
Buttered paperA cartouche of buttered parchment cut to the pan does exactly what was intended: it keeps the surface from drying without steaming the meat as foil would.
EspagnoleThe base sauce is a long-cooked brown sauce built on veal stock and roux. Good commercial demi-glace, loosened with stock and infused off the heat with tarragon, gets you to the same place. Do not boil the tarragon or it turns bitter and grassy.
The garnish, in plain termsCelery batons blanched then simmered in broth; pitted olives blanched to pull the brine down, then filled with quenelle forcemeat containing anchovy; peeled chestnuts simmered in broth; trimmed artichoke bottoms cut in half-hearts; small squares of truffle; large capers. Combining them with the warm sauce at the end, rather than stewing them in it, keeps each element distinct.
TrufflesFresh black truffle is a luxury purchase and canned truffle peelings will not hold a decorative cut. Cured tongue alone, as Ranhofer allows for the border, or blanched black olive paste for the scored slits, gives the same visual contrast honestly.
Poaching the borderThe moulded forcemeat is cooked in a water bath — a shallow pan with boiling water poured around the mould, then a slow oven, in modern terms somewhere around 300F. It is set when firm to the touch and no longer wobbles at the center; overcooking makes it grainy and it will weep.
YieldSix chickens give twelve breast halves and twelve minions — a service for six as a formal course, or eight if the border and garnish are generous.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the run of numbered chicken-breast dishes it belongs to — Harrison, Lorenzo, Lucullus — shows how the house worked: one technique, the raised and butter-roasted suprême, dressed a dozen different ways and named after patrons, public figures and the restaurant's own people. The name here is often taken to honor Lorenzo Delmonico, the nephew who became the driving force of the family business from the 1830s onward and built its reputation for French cooking and its famously long wine list, though Ranhofer, as usual, explains nothing. What the recipe really documents is the logic of nineteenth-century grande cuisine: the food is assembled architecturally, with a poached forcemeat plinth, a crown of meat, and a garnish of separately prepared items bound in brown sauce.