No. 1848

Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Marechale

Filets ou Ailes de Poulet a la Marechale

Pare twelve raw chicken fillets; remove the minion fillets, and suppress the senews and skin which covers them, then marinate in salt, pepper, parsley leaves, and lemon juice. Make an incision on one side of these large fillets, and fill it in with a Duxelle (No. 385), or else fine herbs cooked with truffles; dip in beaten eggs, then roll in bread-crumbs, and baste with clarified butter; immerse them once more in the bread-crumbs, and put on them a buttered baking sheet; pour melted butter over, and brown in a brisk oven, or else broil over a slow fire, or even saute them in clarified butter; trim with favors (No. 10) and dress in a circle filling in the inside with a Toulouse garnishing (No. 766). Dip the minion fillets in a fine light frying batter (No. 137), roll them up into rings, and when fried and have attained a fine color, drain and dress pyramidically over the Toulouse garnishing. A supreme sauce (No. 547) to be served separately.

← No. 1847 Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Marceau Chicken No. 1849 Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Mirabeau →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot always going and half a dozen cross-referenced preparations on hand. Stripped to its bones this is a stuffed, twice-breaded chicken breast, and the cross-references are garnishes you can scale down or replace.

The hinge: two coats of crumbsThe breast is egged and crumbed, brushed with clarified butter, then crumbed again. Egg-and-crumb cooked in butter is what marks a dish a la marechale; the second coat here builds a thicker shell over the duxelles pocket, and dropping it will give you a thinner, more fragile crust.
Minion filletsThe filet mignon of the bird, the small tenderloin strip lying under each breast. Pull the white tendon out by gripping it and scraping the meat away from it, or the fried ring will curl and toughen.
QuantitiesTwelve fillets means six chickens' worth of breast; as a plated course with the garnish that is six to twelve servings. Halve or quarter throughout for home cooking.
Brisk ovenRoughly 425-450F in modern terms; Ranhofer gives no temperatures. The breasts are thin and already buttered, so they colour fast -- check early and go by an internal 165F rather than by the clock.
DuxelleMushrooms and shallot chopped very fine and cooked dry in butter. It must be genuinely dry and cool before it goes into the incision, or the moisture will blow the crumb coating apart.
Toulouse garnishA classical mixture of chicken quenelles, cockscombs and kidneys, mushrooms and truffle bound in a pale sauce. Cockscombs are hard to source outside specialist suppliers; small poached quenelles, button mushrooms and truffle alone make a defensible version.
FavorsA cross-reference to Ranhofer's No. 10, one of his decorative trims for dressing a platter. They are ornament, not food, and nothing is lost by omitting them.
Supreme sauceChicken veloute finished with cream and butter, served separately so it never touches the crumb crust. Keep it below a boil once the cream is in.
Clarified butterUsed throughout because whole butter's milk solids scorch at the temperatures needed to brown crumbs. Clarify your own or use ghee; ordinary melted butter will speckle the coating brown-black.

A Little History

A la marechale is one of the fixed formulas of nineteenth-century French cookery: a small, tender cut, egged and crumbed, cooked in butter and usually associated with truffle, the name generally traced to the marshals of France and their supposed taste for gilded, well-turned-out food. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a numbered system rather than a book of standalone recipes, which is why a single chicken dish here reaches out to a duxelles, a frying batter, a Toulouse garnish and a supreme sauce elsewhere in the volume. The construction is a stuffed breast sealed in crumbs and fried, the pocket holding mushrooms and truffle.