No. 1852

Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Princiere

Filets ou Ailes de Poulet a la Princiere

Choose six well-cleansed chickens, each one to weigh a pound and three-quarters to two pounds; remove the large fillets leaving the pinion on, with the bone kept rather long; lift off the minion fillets, also suppress the large filets' skin and the thin skin covering the minions; dip the latter in egg-whites, then roll in very finely chopped pistachios, previously run through a sieve; twist them around the finger to form a circle and place them in a buttered sautoir; cover with a sheet of buttered paper and poach just when ready to serve only; this will take but five minutes on a moderate fire. Chop the surface of the large fillet without misshaping it whatever, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then cover over with chicken forcemeat and dredge or throw over finely chopped truffles, lay these in a buttered sautoir, shaping them all alike, six with the pinions on the right and six with the pinions on the left, then cook in a slack oven. When done remove and run a ring cut from beef tongue a quarter of an inch thick on the pinion bone and decorate this also with a frill (No. 10). Dress crown-shaped filling in the interior with a garnishing composed of cocks'-combs and kidneys, also slices of foies-gras, the whole combined with supreme sauce (No. 547). Poach the minion fillets and dress them around, serving with a sauce-boatful of the supreme sauce.

← No. 1851 Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Primatice Chicken No. 1853 Chicken Fillets or Breasts a la Sadi-Carnot →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is writing for a Delmonico's brigade with a butcher upstream and a garnish larder on hand. The dish is entirely achievable at home once you translate the vocabulary and accept a simpler garnish.

The hinge: poach the minions at the last minuteThe pistachio-crusted minion fillets take five minutes over moderate heat, and the recipe is explicit that they be poached only as the plate goes out. Everything else can be finished and kept warm; these cannot.
Fillets and minionsThe "large fillet" is the breast lobe; the "minion fillet" (filet mignon) is the tenderloin strip lying beneath it. Twelve of each, since he starts with six birds. Modern chickens run well above his pound-and-three-quarters to two pounds, so the breasts will be considerably larger than his — but it still takes six birds to yield twelve fillets.
Pinion on, bone left longHe wants the first wing joint left attached to the breast with the bone scraped bare — what a butcher now calls a suprême or airline breast. Ask for it that way, or french the drumette yourself.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a casserole dish. Any wide sauté pan with a lid or a sheet of buttered parchment cut to fit will do; the paper is a cartouche and does real work in keeping the surface from drying.
"Chop the surface" and "slack oven"Scoring or lightly mincing the top of the breast gives the forcemeat something to grip; the point is to do it without flattening or distorting the lobe. A slack oven is a cool one, in the region of 300F. Cook until the thickest part of the breast reaches 165F, which at that temperature will be well under half an hour.
Chicken forcemeatRanhofer's chicken forcemeat is raw chicken pounded with panada and cream, essentially a quenelle mixture. A modern mousseline — breast meat, egg white and cream in a processor over ice, seasoned and passed — behaves the same and is far quicker.
Cocks'-combs and kidneysCombs and testicles, standard nineteenth-century garnish, not orderable now outside a specialist butcher. Sautéed mushroom caps, small quenelles or glazed sweetbreads sit in the same place on the plate without pretending to be the same thing.
The frill and the tongue ringNo. 10 is a paper cuff for the bone; the quarter-inch ring cut from cooked beef tongue slides onto the bare bone beneath it as a red collar. Both are pure service decoration and can be dropped without touching the cooking.
YieldTwelve garnished breasts with twelve minions around them — twelve servings as a dinner course, arranged crown-shaped on one platter with the supreme sauce (No. 547, a velouté finished with cream) served separately.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and this entry sits in a long run of near-identical breast dishes — à la Primatice before it, à la Sadi-Carnot after — that differ mainly in their coating, garnish and dedication. That naming habit is the point: a restaurant of that rank was expected to produce a dish honoring a head of state, a patron or a painter, whether or not the honoree ever set foot in the room, and the underlying technique of poached suprêmes with forcemeat, truffle and supreme sauce could be redressed indefinitely. Princière simply means princely, a grade-marker rather than a reference to any particular person. The bare frenched wing bone with its tongue ring and paper frill belongs to the era when food left the kitchen on silver platters to be carved and served in the room, and needed to read well from several feet away.