No. 1849

Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Mirabeau

Filets ou Ailes de Poulet a la Mirabeau

Keep the minion fillets when removing the fillets or wings from the chickens; suppress all the skin and sinews from the large fillets, take off the minion fillets and marinate the larger ones for two hours in a vessel containing salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice, thyme, bay leaf, and parsley leaves, turning them over frequently; remove, drain, and roll in flour, then in beaten eggs, and lastly in bread-crumbs; fry in clarified butter. Pare the minion fillets into oblongs, spread over a layer of chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89), with cooked fine herbs (No. 385), and roll them into cylinder shapes, now range them inside a buttered timbale mold and let cook in a slow oven. Dress the chicken breasts in the center of a dish on top of a little Mirabeau sauce (No. 500), surround them with the prepared paupiettes, and on every one of these lay a channeled mushroom (No. 118) cooked and glazed in chicken glaze (No. 398). Serve with a sauce-boatful of the same sauce.

← No. 1848 Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Marechale Chicken No. 1850 Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Patti →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot always going and a numbered cross-reference for every component. Stripped down, this is a breaded chicken cutlet with a garnish of stuffed tenderloin rolls, and it can be built from parts you make or buy.

The minion filletThe filet mignon of a chicken is the small tenderloin strip lying under the breast, sold now as the chicken tender. Pull the white tendon out before flattening it, or the paupiette will curl as it cooks.
Marinate, but watch the lemonTwo hours in salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice, thyme, bay and parsley is a dry-ish aromatic marinade, not a bath. Keep it refrigerated and go light on the juice; a heavy acid soak turns the surface of the breast chalky and it will not brown evenly.
Clarified butterWhole butter burns well below frying temperature. Clarify it, or use ghee, and fry at a steady medium heat until the crumbs are deep gold, roughly 4 to 5 minutes a side for a breast pounded to even thickness.
Slow ovenRanhofer gives no temperature; "slow oven" is conventionally reckoned somewhere in the region of 275-325F. Set the mold in a water bath so the forcemeat sets rather than weeps, and cook until the rolls reach 165F at the center.
Quenelle forcemeatNo. 89 is raw chicken pounded with panada, egg white and cream. A food processor does it in a minute: cold breast meat, a little egg white, salt, then cream added slowly with the bowl and blade well chilled.
Cooked fine herbsNo. 385 is a duxelles-type preparation, shallot and mushroom cooked down in butter with chopped herbs and a little liquid, then reduced dry. Any tight, dry mushroom duxelles serves the same purpose.
Mirabeau sauce and its garnishNo. 500 is built on anchovy; the Mirabeau name in classical cookery carries anchovy, olives and tarragon with it. Anchovy butter whisked into a reduced velouté or a light chicken jus gives the right flavor if you are not working through the book.
Channeled mushroomsThese are turned mushroom caps, cut in spiral flutes with a small knife, then simmered in butter and lemon and glazed. Purely decorative; a whole sautéed cap does the same job on the plate.
YieldRanhofer gives none, as usual. Each large fillet comes with a single minion fillet, so four breasts yield four tenders and four paupiettes: reckon one fillet and one paupiette per person, serving four as a main course.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a long run of chicken-breast preparations distinguished only by their garnish and sauce: à la Maréchale before it, à la Patti after. That was the logic of the period's grande cuisine, where a technique was learned once and then varied endlessly by name. The Mirabeau garnish is generally traced to the same nineteenth-century French repertoire that produced the anchovy-and-olive treatment for grilled beef, and it is named for the revolutionary orator Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, though the connection between the man and the anchovies has never been convincingly explained. What the recipe shows most clearly is the economy behind the extravagance: having taken the large fillets for the centerpiece, Ranhofer will not let the two small tenders go to waste, so they are flattened, stuffed, rolled and turned into the border.